Search results for ""Chin Music Press""

"Where We Know creates a mosaic of the ultimate mosaic city...these writers illuminate the city's past and the present in a gritty homage fit for natives and foreigners alike. Designed as though Chin Music Press/Broken Levee Books intends to singlehandedly resurrect the art of bookmaking, Where We Know is a book you'll want at your bedside and on your coffee table." --Lucia Silva, NPR "Rutledge (English, Univ. of New Orleans) shows himself, in an introduction both touching and sincere, to understand fully the city and its struggles, to love New Orleans for what it is and what it can be, what it means both to those who decided to stay and those who left." --Library Journal "Where We Know is a must for anyone who wants a more excellent understanding of the tenacity of the people of New Orleans." --The Midwest Book Review Five years after Katrina, New Orleans is still limping. This second book of a planned trilogy looks at both those who stayed on and rebuilt their lives in New Orleans and those who had to say goodbye. It also weaves in historical references and quotes from Louis Armstrong, Lafcadio Hearn, and many others. What emerges is a book that shows how lovers of New Orleans have always battled with its darker side, and how the people's knack for celebrating an impromptu second line goes hand in hand with their acknowledgment of the ghosts in their midst.

Read more less

Co-op availableDigital galleys available by requestOutreach will include popular blogs for gaming (kotaku.com), otaku (kirainet.com), and “nerds” (wired.com)Promotion through enfu’s Facebook Page (over 8,000 likes) and twitter account (1,200+), enfu.com, Chin Music Press’ twitter account and Facebook Page. e-book available, e-ISBN will be on all press materials and on chinmusicpress.comForeword by Jake Parker, founder of InktoberIntroduction by Katsuya Terada, popular Japanese digital artist known as the Doodle King

Read more less

The seventeen stories in this debut collection by Juyanne James interpret the Louisiana experience. They stage encounters mostly with strong women—but also interesting men and families—all trying to survive in their own way. While this collection is as an evolution of the idea of "double-consciousness" and how African Americans see themselves in the world, the characters are remarkable in their own right, without having to be labeled. They are not so much concerned with color as they are with survival. The collection opens with "You Don't Know Me, Child": a young bus rider grows fascinated with a female passenger who carries pictures in her hair, and the rider imagines the woman's past. The fractured "Bayou Buoys" is about a mother whose two boys are missing on the bayou. "Doll" is about early twentieth-century life—when black teachers were brought into small towns in the South to teach—and what happens when a field hand falls in love with a teacher. James has written a thoroughly eclectic, lyrical collection of stories that speaks to the African American tradition, depicting life in New Orleans and rural Louisiana. Juyanne James grew up on a farm in southeast Louisiana; she left at seventeen to join the US Navy. After holding a number of odd jobs (such as over-the-road truck driver), she returned to Louisiana to write and teach. Her fiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Read more less

The Music In Us chronicles the artistic journey of Bette Alexander. With singular devotion, she has painted both abstract and figurative work, driven by her love of texture and color and her curiosity about the world. Painting has always been her North Star, sustaining her through a life full of ups and downs.Alexander's artwork grew as her life evolved, reflecting her experience as a world traveler and social observer. She has taken on overlooked elderly women, genocidal oppression, prisoners in confinement, and the foibles of country life. Born Jewish, she has a fascination with ritual objects and the varieties of religious expression, from the lost synagogues of WWII to the colorful Christian Timkat festival of Ethiopia. Most recently, psychological themes related to COVID-19 and isolation have appeared in her art.Spanning more than forty years, these seventy works show an artist with a gift for expression, finely tuned to the currents of life around her.

Read more less

Equal parts muckraking novel, transnational love story, and socially engaged panorama, Cho Chongnae's The Human Jungle portrays China on the verge of becoming the world's dominant economic force. Against a backdrop of rapidly morphing urban landscapes, readers meet migrant workers, Korean manufacturers out to save a few bucks, high-flying venture capitalists, street thugs, and shakedown artists. The picture of China that emerges is at turns unsettling, awe-inspiring, and heart-breaking. Chongnae deftly portrays a giant awakening to its own raw, volatile, and often uncontrollable power. Translators Bruce Fulton and Ju-Chan Fulton have condensed three of Chongnae's Korean novels, each of which sold more than one million copies in South Korea, into this single English-language edition. Cho Chongnae is one of Korea's most important living writers. He is best known for a trio of massive historical novels: the ten-volume T'aebaek Mountains (1989), the twelve-volume Arirang (1995), and the ten-volume Han River (2002). Cho lives in Seoul, South Korea. Bruce Fulton and Ju-Chan Fulton are the translators of numerous volumes of modern Korean fiction, including the award-winning women's anthologies Words of Farewell and Wayfarer, and, with Marshall R. Pihl, Land of Exile: Contemporary Korean Fiction. They have received two National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellowships, including the first ever given for a translation from the Korean language, and the first residency at the Banff International Literary Translation Centre awarded to translators from any Asian language. Bruce Fulton is the inaugural holder of the Young-Bin Min Chair in Korean Literature and Literary Translation at the University of British Columbia.

Read more less

Yoshinori Henguchi's explosive poetry and gritty photography build on the surrealism of Haruki Murakami and his contemporaries to create a new aesthetic for a young generation of Japanese artists. Henguchi explores what he calls man's "foolish will" to define himself on a canvas of "infinities and nothingness." This collection is especially designed for book lovers, collectors, and readers who revel in the act of reading. It includes Henguchi's essay-poem Nihongo in both English and Japanese, more than sixty pages of color photography, and seventy beautifully designed poems. The overall effect of the book is to plunge the reader into an underground subculture somewhere in the backstreets of Osaka. The mundane trappings of life in Japan--TV screens, kitchen cutlery, household tools, plastic umbrellas, women's shoulder pads--are rendered absurd and surreal in both Henguchi's poetry and photography. Yoshinori Henguchi is a photographer, artist, musician, and poet from Osaka, Japan. He often reads his poetry at live houses in Japan while accompanied by the grinding guitar rhythms of musical group ShinaiKankei (Inner City Relations). He publishes his poems in dojinshi journals sold at underground bookstores in Japan. In 2011 he read his poetry at the Dusseldorf Art Expo and took part in the 50 Eyes: Save Japan Photo Cards Project sponsored by the Tokyo Institute of Photography and CMS Corp. In 2006 he won Canon's New Cosmos of Photography Excellence Award. This is his first book in English. David Michael Ramirez II, the translator, has a PhD in Japan studies from Osaka University of Foreign Studies. Heather Kirkorowicz has a master's degree in philosophy from Stanford University.

Read more less

Sixteen mythical monsters and spirits from Japanese folklore take children on fantastical adventures in this first-ever children’s storybook about yokai. Young readers will meet baku the dream eater, mischievous kappa sprites, a ghost child who lives in a hotel, and many more. Yokai have a rich history dating back centuries in Japan, and today, they can be found in monstercatching video games and animated films. Yokai Stories is the first book to weave Japan’s monster mythology into English-language stories for children. Each tale is accompanied by a haunting, modern portrait of the yokai by Swiss artist Eleonora D’Onofrio.

Read more less

Speak, Son: A Mother''s Memoir is Chagit Deitz''s years-long search for a more complete picture of the struggles her son experienced during his tragically brief life.When Ben Deitz unexpectedly died in 2015, he left behind detailed journals, essays, lyrics, art, music, and many unanswered questions. In a moving narrative that interlaces Ben''s writing with her own, Chagit Deitz attempts to come to terms with her insatiable longing for answers, and for her son.

Read more less

Raised by his grandparents in the tiny village of Metlakatla, Alaska, David A. Boxley left a secure teaching job in his hometown to pursue an uncharted path as a full-time Tsimshian artist, ultimately leading a revival of traditional culture, art, dance, and song. Tsimshian Eagle: A Culture Bearer's Journey chronicles Boxley's life and art through images and interviews. What emerges is a boundlessly creative, restless man who has dedicated his life to keeping Tsimshian culture alive.

Read more less

The second installment in the series of graphic novels that began with Washington State Book Award Finalist We Hereby Refuse: Japanese American Resistance to Wartime IncarcerationBasketball-loving Sumiko Tanaka, then 11, narrates this graphic novel about the World War II incarceration of Japanese Americans. Through her eyes, we watch as her family is forced from their home and subjected to indiscriminate racism as they are shipped off to the concentration camp called Minidoka in Idaho.But Sumiko and her 17-year-old sister Yuri also see acts of charity and solidarity from their non-Japanese neighbors and friends in the Seattle area that make them hopeful for the future. As the young girls struggle with the horrors of being imprisoned in the dusty desert, they also find solace in the fact that some people chose to help. This story highlights the actual actions and experiences of those neighbors and friends.

Read more less

Palmer, a long-time friend of Bruce Lee and one of his youngest martial arts students, recounts Lee’s early years, when he would train a multicultural group of local toughs in empty parking lots and backyards around Seattle. Palmer spends a summer with Lee and his family in Hong Kong and provides fascinating insight into Lee’s personality, from his silly sense of humor and love of practical jokes to his uncanny ability to learn from different fighting traditions to hone his skills. Palmer’s stories paint a picture of a fun-loving, intense young man who worked hard to excel at his craft.

Read more less

2023 Oregon Book Award Finalist in Creative NonfictionPossums Run Amok is a rollicking, slyly hilarious, at times uncomfortable and dark memoir. With fearless candor, Lora Lafayette recounts her life from a delinquent, late 1970s punk rock adolescence through a crooked, manic, transatlantic path to adulthood and her eventual terrifying descent into schizophrenia, all the while trying to wrest as much wild joy as she can out of life.

Read more less

This in-depth look at one of the fastest-growing immigrant groups in the Pacific Northwest provides a much-needed overview of the Korean American experience as well as moving personal anecdotes. Graphs offer information about Korean immigration patterns over time, while black-and-white portraits reveal the people behind the statistics. The Korean American Historical Society is a nonprofit organization founded in 1985 to enrich the collective memory of Korean Americans by collecting, maintaining, and transmitting their stories.

Read more less

Written intimately and in the first person, Persimmon and Frog reveals a less familiar story from World War II. Born in America to immigrant farmers, Kimura was visiting Japan as a 10-year-old when the US entered the war. She was stranded in Japan and spent her preteen and adolescent years in that foreign country, an American who looked completely Japanese. She went to school, absorbing Japanese aesthetics and the solace of art making. After the war, Kimura returned to the US. Relearning English, she graduated college and became a research chemist. In her forties, married with a family, she left that career and pursued her passion for painting with watercolor, sumi ink, and acrylics. She studied Western art at university, but later focused on the Japanese brush and ink on paper. She would eventually help found Puget Sound Sumi Artists. Kimura is now an influential and respected artistic figure in the Pacific Northwest, and she continues to paint and exhibit. Part memoir and part artistic survey, this book takes Kimura's writings, diaries, and interviews, and traces her artistic development from early watercolors of Tacoma's industrial waterfront to recent calligraphic paintings that poignantly engage Eastern and Western influences. The book deftly profiles both her personal life and artistic aspirations, telling a story of profound resilience, independence, and artistic accomplishment.

Read more less

"School Board is a total joy to read, as full of sass and subversive brass as its 18-year-old hero, the political neophyte and Houston school board candidate Tucker 'Catfish' Davis ... I hope School Board is the first of many more to come from this gifted young writer."-Ben Fountain, author of National Book Critics Circle Award winner Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk and Brief Encounters with Che Guevara “Into the riotous cavalcade of great American literary characters tumbles a new class clown, Tucker 'Catfish' Davis, high school senior and aspiring politician. One part Ignatius J. Reilly from A Confederacy of Dunces, one part Hazel Motes from Wise Blood, and several parts Willie Stark from All the King's Men, Catfish Davis is a singular presence on the page. Mike Freedman hasn't just written the funniest book about a school board election, he's written the kind of David-and-Goliath story that gets all of us 'little people' cheering and laughing in equal measure.”-David Abrams, author of Fobbit Houston, Texas, 1999. Enter Tucker "Catfish" Davis, a high school senior with high-flying political ambitions as the self-proclaimed heir to populist Louisiana Governors Huey and Earl Long. Armed with idealism and a fedora, he embarks on a quixotic campaign to get elected to the local school board in an effort to help the "little people" of Houston. In the wild days that follow, Catfish's long-shot bid gains traction through guerilla campaigning against a questionable tax deal supported by his opponent, a powerful executive at an Enron-esque energy company. With the help of his classmates, an indicted Louisiana governor, a gay journalist with nascent mayoral ambitions and an ex-Green Beret trained to wage unconventional warfare, Catfish makes it a race Houston will never forget. Based on an actual 1999 news story, School Board is an entertaining but satirical debut novel that revels in the diversity, madness and absurdities of the Bayou City.

Read more less

Meet artist Mari Ichimasu's collection of traveling cats, an adorable array of water-color kitties teeming with personality. Viola wears binoculars, ready to watch the whales. Maka is barefoot with a guitar and a bottle of beer peeking out of her pack. Jake dons snowshoes, a thick sweater, and a scarf as he heads to snow country. These water-color illustrations are accompanied by simple sweet poems that tell of each cat's journey. Meet all 45 traveling felines in this debut collection.

Read more less

"Deftly upends the compliant narrative with impeccably documented stories of resistance and rebellion ... Made urgent yet again, the trio’s courageous refusals to accept the U.S.—their!—government’s heinous miscarriage of justice should irrefutably embolden new generations ... Their collective history will resonate with older teens. Also highly recommended for high-school and college classrooms." — Terry Hong, Booklist “It leaves you simultaneously furious, questioning ideas of loyalty and citizenship … and deeply moved. May all of us learn, and share, these stories." — Moira Macdonald, The Seattle Times Three voices. Three acts of defiance. One mass injustice. The story of camp as you’ve never seen it before. Japanese Americans complied when evicted from their homes in World War II -- but many refused to submit to imprisonment in American concentration camps without a fight. In this groundbreaking graphic novel, meet JIM AKUTSU, the inspiration for John Okada’s No-No Boy, who refuses to be drafted from the camp at Minidoka when classified as a non-citizen, an enemy alien; HIROSHI KASHIWAGI, who resists government pressure to sign a loyalty oath at Tule Lake, but yields to family pressure to renounce his U.S. citizenship; and MITSUYE ENDO, a reluctant recruit to a lawsuit contesting her imprisonment, who refuses a chance to leave the camp at Topaz so that her case could reach the U.S. Supreme Court. Based upon painstaking research, We Hereby Refuse presents an original vision of America’s past with disturbing links to the American present.

Read more less

From debut fiction writer Carla Crujido comes a delicately intertwined, fairytale-inspired collection of short stories.Part vivid historical drama, part melancholy fever dream, The Strange Beautiful centers on Mount Vernon Apartments in Spokane, Washington, offering a glimpse into the lives of ten tenants over a period of one hundred years.In the opening story, "The Songbird," we meet the building's caretaker, a WWI veteran trying to rebuild his life amidst the Spanish flu pandemic. In "The Telephone," a 21st-century poet's longing for a bygone era nurtures a friendship that transcends time. A 1930s department store mannequin navigates the challenges of womanhood in the surreal, darkly humorous tale, "The Mannequin." And in "The Suitcase," an exhausted woman scrambles to tidy up her boyfriend's unprocessed emotions, which have materialized inside boxes all over the apartment.As we witness the quiet but fraught moments of the tenants' everyday lives, these uncanny narratives create a world that is at once familiar and fantastic. A striking portrait of a city not often depicted in literature, The Strange Beautiful leads us through the streets of Spokane and the similarly evolving internal landscapes of these ten characters. Crujido's masterful storytelling shows us how a single place can hold a myriad of histories, how our lives are interconnected with strangers, and how our collective tales are forever repeating.

Read more less

Love is remembered as a jungle of flora and fauna cleaved by tectonic shock and human fault. Our restless narrator stirs between Singapore, Fukushima, and Vancouver with prose that engulfs like radioactive mist. Personal, geographic, political, and cultural environments take on one another's qualities, culminating volcanically in the Tohoku earthquake that shatters Japan. Leanne Dunic won the Alice Munro Short Story Contest and was shortlisted for the Asian-Canadian Emerging Writer Award in 2015. A multidisciplinary artist, she sings and plays guitar for Luck Commander and creates visual art that has been shown in Japan, Singapore, and Canada.

Read more less

The last installment in a series of graphic novels that began with We Hereby Refuse (Washington State Book Award Finalist) and Those Who Helped Us:This book tells the stories of six courageous Japanese American soldiers from the Pacific Northwest who volunteered to fight in the combined 442nd Regimental Combat Team with the 100th Infantry Battalion during World War II.While their friends and family were incarcerated in American concentration camps, Nisei soldiers fought heroically in the most dangerous missions on the European front. Adapted from interviews by Lawrence Matsuda and brought to life by Matt Sasaki's dynamic illustrations, Fighting for America preserves and honors the stories of six veterans who made a significant mark on American history.Shiro Kashino, Army Infantry SergeantFrank Nishimura, Army InfantryJimmie Kanaya, Army MedicRoy Matsumoto, Military Intelligence in the PacificTosh Yasutake, Army MedicTeruyuki "Turk" Susuki, Army Infantry

Read more less

At times scorching, at times brimming with awe and desire, this debut book of poems resonates with a brilliant new voice.When Justine Chan worked as a park ranger at Zion National Park, she chose to retell a Southern Paiute folktale for her weekly evening program on coyotes. The more that long, hot summer unfolded, the more time she spent alone in the desert, the more she retold the story, the more the story became her life. And in that space, she began to write.Should You Lose All Reason(s) is unafraid of looking hard– back, down, towards, around, forward, at the stories we tell, at herself, at the desert, at the sun, at everything. In conversation with the Southern Paiute folktale, she weaves together a triptych of poems, poems both always on the move and stuck, in exile, in wilderness. Drawing from her experiences serving in AmeriCorps, working as a park ranger, and traveling across the United States, she explores race, loneliness, stories, hauntings, family, landscapes and cityscapes, climate change, survival, music, resilience, the West, and America itself.

Read more less

In a little Hawaiian house with a mango tree, Cathy and her babysitter Mrs. Sato spend their afternoons arranging flowers, cooking, and having adventures. When Cathy has to move away, Mrs. Sato comforts her by sharing her own story of immigrating from Japan to Hawaii. Lori Matsukawa’s debut children's book tells a heartwarming story of intergenerational friendship, immigration, and bravery. She shows readers how heritage, food, traditions, and stories can help them feel at home wherever they are.

Read more less

Traversing the wild landscapes of the American West, prose and photography combine to create a lucid, dream-like vision of visitations and allegorical animal encounters with Snake, Owl, and Dragonfly, among others. The Spring tells a stirring, elegiac tale of death, love, rebirth, survival, and resilience.

Read more less

In our ever-more-globalized world, how better to connect than with food, and who better to connect us than a chowhound communications professor? A.V. Crofts has spent decades eating (and learning) her way around the world. She's studied in China, taught in Italy, and conducted humanitarian communications trainings in war-torn Sudan. Here, she traces a lifetime of meals across states and continents for the ways that food ties us together. With warm, thoughtful prose, Crofts invites us to the only coffee shop in Kunming; to a home-cooked feast at a civil rights pilgrimage in Alabama; to a surprise Thanksgiving in Germany; and to her annual Lunar New Year dumpling party in Seattle. This full-color visual tour-de-force will delight foodies, armchair travelers, and anyone who's ever learned a little something from a special meal. Photos, "sketchnotes," and other ephemera from Crofts's globetrotting coalesce into a truly beautiful meditation on how food nourishes community. A.V. Crofts works at the University of Washington as a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Communication and a Clinical Instructor in the Department of Global Health. Her work has been published in Gastronomica and Saveur and on her popular blog avcrofts.com.

Read more less

The First Lady of Underfashions is a nonfiction saga-like memoir written by Christina Erteszek and including excerpts from her parents' (Jan and Olga) unpublished memoirs. It is a complex, layered, and nuanced story that bridges the violence of war, the innovation of thought, the singularity of religion, the quest for identity, and the intrigues and intricacies of family life. Jan and Olga escape from World War II Europe and arrive in the US with just a few dollars. They turn their paltry savings into a multi-million-dollar fashion business. Olga becomes a leading patent holder of female lingerie, a trendsetter in the industry, and is widely known for her innovative business tactics. But as this husband-and-wife team think of retiring, they decide to merge with another fashion company, which proves to be a fatal move when a loophole in the agreement allows for a hostile takeover. This is also a story of a daughter's need to find herself. Along her path to self-discovery, she discovers her parents have many secrets, some of which will never be revealed.

Read more less

Christmas Eve in Vacherie, Louisiana, finds the banks of the Mississippi alive with fire. Walter is consumed with planning the perfect bonfire-the one that will finally beat his brother's blaze and extinguish the lingering melancholy from his father's death. As Walter obsesses over wood, kindling, and structure, his family life teeters on the brink of collapse. Elizabeth Sanders' fiction has appeared in the Arkansas Review, the International Feminist Journal of Politics, and the anthology Something in the Water. She is from New Orleans and lives in New York with her husband and daughter. This is her first novel.

Read more less

"Like a mournful fairytale, Jennifer Shaw's beautifully staged tableaux are alternately sweet and menacing, filled with emotion but never spilling over into sentimentality. The poetic marriage of words and photos makes Hurricane Story a children's book for grown-ups." --Josh Neufeld, creator of A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge "Even if you think you've seen it all where Katrina's concerned, trust me, you're going to love Shaw's marvelous memoir."--The Times-Picayune "This is the kind of book that reminds you that books can be beautiful objects." --The Los Angeles Times "Hurricane Story is a tabletop, toy box Odyssey. With simple objects, trenchant statements, and exquisite camera vision, Shaw relates an epic tale of displacement, creation and discovery." -- George Slade, curator, Photographic Resource Center, Boston "An engaging variation on a near mythic theme."--Gambit Weekly Hurricane Story is a spellbinding odyssey of exile, birth and return told in forty-six photographs and simple, understated prose. This first-person narrative told through dreamlike images of toys and dolls chronicles one couple's evacuation from New Orleans ahead of the broken levees, the birth of their first child on the day that Katrina made landfall, and their eventual return to the city as a family. Shaw's photographs, at turns humorous and haunting, contrast deftly with the prose. This clothbound hardcover edition includes an introduction by Rob Walker, author of Letters From New Orleans and former "Consumed" columnist for The New York Times Magazine.

Read more less

"Shiro Kashiba stands atop any list defining Japanese food in Seattle. He's been called many things--culinary master, fisherman, mushroom forager and nature lover--but first and foremost he's the "Sushi King." His eponymous debut cookbook is no chef-vanity affair, though, but a riveting and imaginative blending of East and West in the quest for high gastronomic art." --Shelf Awareness "A fabulous read for sushi lovers or anyone who enjoys a simple memoir filled with both inspiration and perseverance." -Library Journal Shiro Kashiba used to walk to the fishing piers of Seattle in the 1960s to retrieve buckets of unwanted salmon roe and pesky Puget Sound octopus from the fishermen. He'd hike the beaches of the Pacific Northwest to gather geoduck before there was a market for the shellfish. Chef Shiro saw treasure where others saw trash. And through this sushi chef's eyes, readers discover the amazing bounty of the Pacific Northwest. In this revealing cookbook/memoir, Chef Shiro recounts his early days in Tokyo washing dishes and sleeping in the backroom of a prestigious Ginza sushi shop, his decision to come to the United States with little more than an introductory letter, and his ultimate success in Seattle. But the story doesn't stop there. While Shiro settles into his role as Seattle's premier sushi chef, he develops a deep appreciation for the local delicacies of his new home. Soon he begins to replace expensive Japanese imports with cheaper and more delicious local delicacies. Goodbye bluefin, hello albacore. Shiro tells fascinating and often humorous stories about the region's offerings: his first encounters with geoduck (some say he was the first to serve it raw), the world's tastiest sea urchin, hunting for matsutake mushrooms in the Cascades, a twelve-course meal of silvery ocean smelt, and much more. Ann Norton provides mouthwatering photographs of Shiro's seasonal recipes.

Read more less

Nathan Vass has been driving a Seattle city bus at night for the last decade. He began writing a popular blog, The View from Nathan's Bus, about his encounters with the riders of the No. 7 bus, which cuts through the heart of the city's Rainier Valley, one of the most racially and ethnically diverse zip codes in the US. Nathan's blog entries grew into this book. His stories and photography illuminate an overlooked part of urban life and highlight the simple connections people make on a daily basis. His depictions of interactions on the city bus range from heartbreaking to hilarious to inspiring.

Read more less

"I lived in a haunted apartment." Davisson opens this definitive work on Japan's ghosts, or yurei, with a personal tale about the spirit world. Shifting from anecdotes to deep research to translation of ancient ghost stories, he explores the persistence of yurei in modern Japan and their continued popularity throughout the West. Color images of yurei appear throughout the book.

Read more less

David Byrne's play about Imelda Marcos called for the theater to be transformed into a disco. Spanish photographer Fernando Sancho found the whole idea mesmerizing, so he traipsed to a lumberyard in Calgary to capture the making of the pop-up disco, followed it back to Seattle to photograph the all-Asian cast practicing in an abandoned building while they waited for the disco to be installed, and finally chronicled the moments when the cast took the stage in a Seattle Repertory Theater that had been transformed into a 70s era discotheque complete with mirror ball. Interviews with cast members reveal the thrills and challenges of acting in a play where the audience is part of the production.

Read more less

With a deeply-imbedded indebtedness to their father Morimasa Morimoto, a self-made man in post-war Japan, two sisters struggle to uphold a family legacy. Sakiko moves to the fantastically free United States. Fragile and unsure in 1960s San Francisco, she clings to her brazen artist husband for stability. Hiroko, headstrong and irreverent, uses her father's money to move to New York, promising to become a famous artist. Intolerant of weakness in others, she crumbles in the face of her own shortcomings. From catty carpooling moms to manipulative stoners, abortions to adultery, White Elephant is a vivid book from a seasoned artist turned writer. Mako Idemitsu, daughter of Rockefeller-esque petroleum executive Sazo Idemitsu, reconfigures her own family discord to reflect on the binds of being female in this gorgeous English translation. Born and raised in Tokyo, Japan, Mako Idemitsu immigrated to the United States in 1963 where she met and married abstract expressionist painter Sam Francis. Disillusioned with housewife life she picked up an 8mm camera and became a pioneer in experimental video and the feminist art movement of the 1970s. Internationally acclaimed, her work has been featured in major museums worldwide and is included in the MOMA's permanent collection. This is her debut novel. Award-winning translator Juliet Winters Carpenter has rendered the works of Abe Kobo, Fumiko Enchi, and Minae Mizumura. Within the year she will be the first person to have won the prestigious Japan-US Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature twice.

Read more less

Photojournalist Dean Wong has been chronicling life in America's Chinatowns for four decades. His sensitive eye and man-of-the-people interviews bring these ghettos disguised as tourist traps to life. Through Wong, we meet the drag queen deciding to stop his medications and die of AIDS with dignity; the elderly Chinese American facing eviction as the neighborhood gentrifies; the artist told by the city that his shop is a fire hazard, and the man who challenged Bruce Lee to a fight ...and lost. Wong focuses his attention on the Chinatowns of Seattle, San Francisco, Vancouver, and New York. He reveals how "Chinatown" is sometimes a misnomer because these neighborhoods often include large pockets of Vietnamese, Japanese, and other Asian American families. He also chronicles the celebratory side of life in these communities, from the events around Lunar New Year to a much-anticipated visit by the Dalai Lama. Building on the groundwork of Bonnie Tsui's American Chinatown (2009), Seeing the Light exposes an oft overlooked American community and reminds the reader that these neighborhoods are filled with much more than good places to get dim sum. Dean Wong is an award-winning photojournalist who has been chronicling Asian American life for nearly forty years. The city of Seattle and King County, Washington, declared March 8, 1995, Dean Wong Day to honor his efforts documenting the Asian and Pacific American community.

Read more less

Timber Curtain occupies a space between ramshackle and remodel. It starts with the demolition of a house—Richard Hugo House, the Seattle literary center where Frances McCue worked, lived, and mourned her husband. From there, McCue’s poems spiral out to encompass icebergs, exorcisms, the refugee crisis, and the ethics of the place-myths we create for ourselves. The speaker is plainspoken, oracular, wry, indicting, and hopeful. Like the Seattle skyline, poems erase and recombine into a landscape forever saturated with ghosts. Several poems will be central in McCue’s upcoming (2018) documentary Where the House Was.From “The Wind Up”:The city erasing itself and the buildingwhere I find you, if I could find you,comes into focus, then out. I’m pointingto the site where you worked, the once-wasplace. In that gesture, a person couldfeel local. I could stand outside that shopand look up to where we loved each other.Frances McCue is a poet, writer, teacher, and arts instigator. From 1996–2006, she was the founding director of Richard Hugo House in Seattle and is currently a Senior Lecturer at the University of Washington. She has published four books, two of which have been finalists for the Washington State Book Award in History/General Nonfiction, and another of which won the 2011 Washington State Book Award in Poetry. Currently, McCue is producing Where the House Was, a documentary film about the demolition of the Richard Hugo House building in Seattle.

Read more less

In a dark world where all hope seems lost, Oshun’s book of mirrors reveals the true definition of beauty.

Read more less

The curious durian fruit, both delicious and stinky, is the embodiment of dissonance. Author Sally Tyler uses the fruit's dual nature as a metaphor for exploring the dissonance inherent in recent policy and political trends in the U.S. and Southeast Asia. Such dissonance is on display when hopeful social movements bring young and old into the streets by the tens of thousands at the same time a call to restore order paves the way for dictators like Duterte, the tacit ratification of yet another Thai coup, and the election of Trump. The book's essays, a series of snapshots spanning four years, tackle topics from criminal justice and drug addiction to fashion activism and artistic censorship. Tyler's work, some of which has appeared in New Mandala and Policy Forum, analyzes the U.S. retreat from multilateralism at a time when complex global problems -- climate change, economic inequality, the coronavirus pandemic -- require even greater collaboration. Through the lens of a dynamic, yet under-reported, region, Tyler brings fresh perspective to Trump policy reverberations in far corners of the world and argues for greater connectivity in what has become a fractured era.

Read more less

Urban Creatures skirts the edge of reality, dexterously defying form and genre. Primal urges feed on the city, stalking its inhabitants. From a psychotherapist gorging on tragedy, to a predatory hair thief, and a grief-stricken father’s search for his lost daughter, humanity’s subterranean secrets and shames are unearthed. Urban survival makes creatures of us all. Sarah Gray's short stories shift from the unsettling to the surreal to the frightening, all cut through with her characteristic black humor.

Read more less

"From Cairo to Beirut" is an illustrated travel memoir of the author's journey to retrace a 200-year-old route of Scottish artist David Roberts. Shinde traveled a route through Cairo, Sinai, Petra, Palestine, Israel, and Lebanon -- ancient lands steeped in natural beauty, culture, architecture, and history -- to sketch and discover a region far removed from the newspaper headlines. Many times, Shinde stood within a 10-foot radius of where Roberts stood, and sketched what he sketched. The book includes 250 original sketches by the author and 25 lithographs from David Roberts.

Read more less

"From Susie Wong to Madame Butterfly to Miss Saigon: you might think that we've had enough of American men adventuring, scoring, and coming undone in the Far East. But you'd be wrong. Gammarino's Big in Japan is a shrewd and lively book, sharp-eyed and unsparing in its account of a young American's good and very bad moments overseas. The writing is wired and the ultimate judgement is merciless. It's seductive and it's devastating." -PF Kluge, author of Eddie and the Cruisers and Gone Tomorrow While playing to lackluster crowds in their hometown of Philadelphia, progressive rock band Agenbite clings to the comforting half-truth that they're doing better in Japan. When their manager agrees to send them over on a shoestring tour, though, they're swiftly forced to give up their illusions and return stateside. All but one of them, that is. Brain Tedesco, the band's obsessive-compulsive nerve center, has fallen in love with a part-time sex worker - the first woman ever to have touched him - and his illusions have only just begun. What ensues is a gritty coming-of-age tale in which Brain, intent on achieving some kind of transcendence, paradoxically (or not so paradoxically) descends into the Hungry Ghost realm of Tokyo's underworld. He becomes, in effect, a gaki - the insatiable creature of Buddhist cosmology - and must learn how to live even as his outsize desires threaten to engulf him. By turns compassionate and ruthless, erotic and grotesque, riotously serious and deadly funny, Big in Japan is a sparking, gut-wrenching, face-melting debut novel.

Read more less

Foreword and short story by National Book Award Winner Charles Johnson Introduction by Thaïsa Way, PhDShort story by New York Times Best Selling Author, Jamie FordAcademics, novelists, poets, and garden enthusiasts examine the legacy of immigrant and nurseryman Fujitaro Kubota, whose unique gardens transformed Seattle's regional landscape in the 20th century. A self-taught gardener, Kubota built a thriving landscape business, eventually assembling 20 acres in south Seattle that he shaped into a beautiful and enduring Japanese garden. Today, this public park serves one of Washington’s most diverse zip codes. An innovator and artist, Kubota created the first “drive-through” garden to capitalize on America’s love for the automobile. While incarcerated at Minidoka prison camp during World War II, Kubota also created a memorable garden in the desert. To Kubota, everything has spirit. Rocks and stones pulsed with life, he said, and that energy is still apparent in his gardens today. Photographs by Gemina Garland-Lewis and Nathan Wirth are interwoven with original poetry by Samuel Green, Claudia Castro-Luna, and others to make this a unique book where every page presents a different view of Kubota’s garden.

Read more less

Letters home detail the life, travels, and studies of a young artist immersing herself in Eastern spiritual and artistic traditions during the late 60s and early 70s. Before the Internet, texting, and social media were ubiquituous, Stablein travels through India, Nepal, and Tibet on a journey from girlhood to adulthood and eventually motherhood.

Read more less

Arriving in Seattle on the eve of World War II, Japanese-born Mitsuko falls for Tom, a widowed pastor, and becomes surrogate mother to his fair-haired American toddler, Bill. But the bombing of Pearl Harbor strains the newly formed family as U.S. government mandates and Tom's growing discomfort with all things Japanese force Mitsuko and young Bill to leave Seattle and Tom behind for the Minidoka Internment Camp, unsure if they will ever return. Two decades later, memories of Minidoka and long-lost Mitsuko haunt Bill, sparking an arduous journey that leads him from Seattle's International District to newly reconstructed Japan to find his Japanese mother and learn the truth about their shared past. Jay Rubin is one of the foremost English-language translators of Japanese literature. He is best known for his numerous translations of works by Haruki Murakami, Japan's leading contemporary novelist, and the study Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words. Most recently, he has translated the first two books of Murakami's bestselling novel, 1Q84. In addition, Rubin's Making Sense of Japanese remains one the widely used guides to Japanese language studies. Jay Rubin received his PhD in Japanese literature from the University of Chicago and taught at Harvard University and the University of Washington. He lives near Seattle with his wife.

Read more less

This dark comedy explores the lost universes of disgraced idol Dylan Greenyears. Dylan had always wanted to live as many lives as he could-that was the appeal of being an actor. But at the end of a brief stint as a Hollywood heartthrob, Dylan loses the lead in Titanic and exiles himself and his wife to a recently settled exoplanet called New Taiwan. At first, life beyond Earth seems uncannily un-wondrous. Dylan teaches at an American prep school, raises a family with his high school sweetheart, and lives out his restlessness through literature. But then a box of old fan mail (and the hint of a galaxy-wide conspiracy) offers Dylan a chance to recapture the past. As he tries to balance this transdimensional midlife crisis against family life, Dylan encounters a cast of extraordinary characters: a supercomputer with aspirations of godhood, a Mormon-fundamentalist superfan, an old-school psychoanalyst, a sampling of his alternate selves, and, once again, the love of his lives. King of the Worlds throws cosmology, technology, nineties pop culture, and religion into an existential blender for a mix that is by turns tragic and absurd, elegiac and filled with wonder. M. Thomas Gammarino is the author of the novel Big in Japan and the novella Jellyfish Dreams. His short fiction has appeared in the New York Tyrant, Tinfish, Word Riot, and the Hawai'i Review, among others. In 2014, Gammarino received the Elliot Cades Award for Literature, Hawaii's highest literary honor. He lives and teaches in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Read more less

A fortuneteller hires a detective to find her missing son in this existential noir mystery. A startling clue leads the detective into the underground worlds of fortunetelling and "pleasure" tours. The missing son reminds him of an old case which ended badly, one he is compelled to reopen. As he investigates both, he finds his life becoming more ghostlike. Todd Shimoda has published four novels on Japanese themes. The books have been translated into six languages with over one hundred thousand copies printed worldwide. Todd was also the recipient of the Hawaii Literary Arts Council's 2010 Elliot Cades Award for Literature.

Read more less

Bill Porter follows the Yellow River, the world's sixth longest river, from its mouth to its source high in the Tibetan Plateau, a journey of more than three thousand miles through nine Chinese provinces. The trip takes the master translator into what was once the cradle of Chinese civilization and to the hometowns and graves of key historical figures such as Confucius, Mencius, Lao-tzu, and Chuang-tzu. Porter's depth of knowledge of Chinese history and culture is unparalleled. Yellow River Odyssey, already a bestseller in China, reveals a complex, fascinating, contradictory country. Porter masterfully digs beneath China's present-day materialism and the deep wounds of the Cultural Revolution to get at the roots of Chinese culture. And he does so with an ever-present wit and a keen eye for the telling detail. The book also includes more than fifty black-and-white photographs taken by Porter during his travels. Bill Porter is an award-winning author and translator also known by his pen name, Red Pine. He is considered one of the foremost translators of Chinese texts, especially Buddhist and Taoist poetry and sutras. His translation work includes major Buddhist texts such as The Platform Sutra, The Diamond Sutra, and The Heart Sutra as well as the best-selling poetry collections Taoteching and Collected Songs of Cold Mountain. He is also the author of Zen Baggage and Road to Heaven: Encounters with Chinese Hermits. Porter lives in Port Townsend, Washington.

Read more less

"So lovely to look at, so pleasant to hold, with a bit of intrigue or insight on every page."--The Times-Picayune This book of essays and art was compiled in the fall of 2005 while the writers were living in exile and watching their city drown. This lovingly designed paperback edition opens with a line of cars leaving New Orleans ahead of Hurricane Katrina and ends in a mad Mardi Gras romp. The anthology, structured like a jazz funeral, includes essays by Jason Berry and Toni McGee Causey as well as reproductions of ninteenth century prints of the city.

Read more less

Drought and fires, floods and rising tides: These and other climate-driven forces are compelling us to examine our role as inhabitants of our imperiled planet. In over forty vitally important essays and vignettes, Natural Consequences is Char Miller’s literary tour de force that illuminates the historical background of how we got here, what we need to do now, and how we can thrive into the future.Professor of Environmental Analysis and History, and author of books, articles, and essays, Char Miller’s narratives are not only expansive in scope, but also intimate and personal. Living in Southern California, he walks us through the environmental touchstones of his backyard, through his neighborhood, into the widely varied ecospheres of California, and then the world beyond.The essays encourage readers to look for themselves at the meaning behind environmental disasters and injustices, but also examine the tiniest details that can be encountered simply by taking a walk. As Char Miller wanders, we see the world anew through his eyes and words. And we are better for it.

Read more less