Letters to Memory

(Paperback)

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Praise for Karen Tei Yamashita:

"It's a stylistically wild ride, but it's smart, funny and entrancing." NPR

"Fluid and poetic as well as terrifying." New York Times Book Review

With delightful plays of voice and structure, this is literary fiction at an adventurous, experimental high point." Kirkus

"Magnificent. . . . Intriguing." Library Journal

"This powerful, deeply felt, and impeccably researched fiction is irresistibly evocative." Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Scintillations is an excursion through the Japanese internment using archival materials from the Yamashita family as well as a series of epistolary conversations with composite characters representing a range of academic specialties. Historians, anthropologists, classiciststheir disciplines, and Yamashita's engagement with them, are a way for her explore various aspects of the internment and to expand its meaning beyond her family, and our borders, to ideas of debt, forgiveness, civil rights, Orientalism, and community.

Karen Tei Yamashita is the author of Through the Arc of the Rain Forest, Brazil-Maru, Tropic of Orange, Circle K Cycles, I Hotel, and Anime Wong, all published by Coffee House Press. I Hotel was selected as a finalist for the National Book Award and awarded the California Book Award, the American Book Award, the Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association Award, and the Association for Asian American Studies Book Award.

Reviews

Shaped and voiced with literary flair, this is clearly a book Yamashita felt compelled to write, and her sense of purpose makes this historical excavation feel deeply personal." Kirkus While this account may provide context for some of the themes found in Yamashitas fiction, the authors personal reflections on a dark period of American history will resonate with a larger audience concerned with how some U.S. organizations have targeted specific communities. Library Journal, *starred review* Yamashita positions these stories within larger questionswhat is the meaning of evil, justice, war, and forgiveness . . . Yamashitas hopscotch approach makes the deeper claim that there is no explanation and no possible reparation for events like slavery, internment, or the bombing of Hiroshimaonly the disorienting reality they produce and the legacy of pain, distrust, and shame they leave behind. Publishers Weekly Letters to Memory is not only for history buffs searching out new perspectives, but for anyone wanting to better understand humanity. NewPages

Author Bio

Karen Tei Yamashita: Karen Tei Yamashita is the author of Through the Arc of the Rain Forest, Brazil-Maru, Tropic of Orange, Circle K Cycles, I Hotel, and Anime Wong, all published by Coffee House Press. I Hotel was selected as a finalist for the National Book Award and awarded the California Book Award, the American Book Award, the Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association Award, and the Association for Asian American Studies Book Award. She has been a US Artists Ford Foundation Fellow and co-holder of the University of California Presidential Chair for Feminist & Critical Race & Ethnic Studies. She is currently Professor of Literature and Creative Writing at the University of California, Santa Cruz.