Books
Coming Soon
By the Shore of Lake Michigan
Forthcoming from UCLA’s Asian American Studies Press. What started as a passion project to translate a book of tanka poetry that my grandparents, Tomiko and Ryokuyō Matsumoto, published in 1960 grew into a decade-long project that eventually brought together a remarkable team of tanka scholars and translators. Translating poetry feels to me a little like what I imagine the art of gem cutting to be. With edit after edit, our little team tried to unlock the hidden meaning within each poem and fashion the equivalent of a brilliant cut diamond; multi-faceted, sparkling, and jewel-like in its precision. It’s been a long, arduous and often exhilarating journey. I can think of no better method of getting to know the nuances of a language that is not one’s mother tongue than translating its poetry. Or of understanding the innermost feelings of one’s long-gone family members.
Coming Soon
Rice, Water, Earth: Travels Through Japan’s Artisan Sake Culture
2021, Tuttle Publishing. This is a project I am working on with my co-writer, sake sommelier and sake educator Michael Tremblay. For me, it’s a natural outgrowth of years of sake reporting and three sake certifications. To research the book, we’ve visited over three dozen breweries, sake experts, and countless sake bars and restaurants in order to bring you the stories of the passionate craftspeople who are keeping this ancient tradition alive. Luckily our final trip ended just as the Covid-19 crisis was gaining steam in Asia; now we’re busily putting the book together, word by word, and image by image.
Displaced: Manzanar 1942–1945: The Incarceration of Japanese Americans
This book, published in 2018, was prompted in part by the 2016 election of Donald Trump, and disturbing echoes that began to reverberate throughout America of the injustices visited upon Japanese Americans during World War II. The Trump administration’s assault on immigrant rights brought back painful reminders of the round-up and imprisonment my people in 1942, despite a complete lack of evidence that they had committed any wrongdoing. Publisher Tom Adler and editor/designer Evan Backes assembled a powerful set of photographs of the U.S. Government prison camp Manzanar. They asked me to contribute an introductory essay and section introductions for the book. A writer I admire, Pico Iyer, wrote the foreword.
The project held special relevance for me because my father and his entire family were incarcerated at Manzanar. I had also written a series of essays on the photography of the prison camp and so was familiar with its famous chroniclers, including Dorothea Lange and Ansel Adams.
Tom and Evan’s goal was to present the photographs simply, with the photography as the primary focus. The beauty of the photographs, and the injustice of the entire prison camp saga, they added, made the book “seem critical and even timely.” All of those things were true then, and remain so today.
The Race: Tales in Flight
This photo-art novel was the result of a four-and-a-half year collaboration with artist and University of New Mexico emeritus professor Patrick Nagatani. The Race marked Patrick's evolution from visual to prose storyteller, and a continuation of his interest in environmental, spiritual, feminist, and pacifist issues. It tells the story of fifteen women pilots from around the globe engaged in a trans-Pacific race from Tokyo to San Francisco, piloting retrofitted British World War II Spitfire floatplanes.
This is Patrick’s photo of Peach 5, the floatplane that belongs to the fictional character I created for the book, Janet Mochizuki.
Photo Credit: © 2017 The Estate of Patrick Nagatani, courtesy Andrew Smith Gallery, Tucson.
For the book, Patrick created stunning photographs combining plane models he constructed and photographs of clouds taken by his close friend, pilot, and photographer Scott Rankin, each depicting one of the novel's fifteen floatplanes. I was one of nine writers who contributed chapters to the novel. I also served as one of the book's editors.
For nearly the entire length of the project, Patrick waged a painful and hard-fought battle for his life against Stage 4 metastatic colorectal cancer. A week after launching the book at an Albuquerque Museum book signing, he passed away on October 27, 2017.
For more on my recollections of Patrick, you can read this post.
You can order the book from:
· Amazon.com
To order Patrick’s accompanying art prints:
· Andrew Smith Gallery
The Parent's Guide to Eating Disorders:SUPPORTING SELF-ESTEEM, HEALTHY EATING & POSITIVE BODY IMAGE AT HOME
This book grew out of a cover story for People magazine that I reported as a staff correspondent there. A series of interviews with Dr. Marcia Herrin, the founder and head of the Dartmouth College eating disorders program, resulted in this book and our longstanding collaboration. Having spent a number of years early in my career reporting on eating disorders and body image, I have immense sympathy for the kids, young adults, women and men who struggle with this insidious mental disease. They and their families are too often unjustly stigmatized for a condition that is as genetically and biologically based as diabetes or schizophrenia. They can, however, take hope in advances in the field that herald more effective treatments.
You can order it from these booksellers: