Remembrance of Hisaye Yamamoto, Sunday, March 27, 2011

SUNDAY, MARCH 27, LOS ANGELES: “Remembrance of Hisaye Yamamoto to Be Held in Little Tokyo”

A remembrance of short story writer and essayist Hisaye Yamamoto will be held on Sunday, March 27, at 2 p.m. in the Garden Room of the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center, 244 S. San Pedro St. (between 2nd and 3rd streets) in Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo.

Yamamoto, the author of “Seventeen Syllables and Other Stories,” passed away on Jan. 30 at the age of 89. Her stories of Japanese American life in California have been published in mainstream literary journals as well as Japanese American newspapers and Asian American anthologies. She is best known for such stories as “Seventeen Syllables,” “Yoneko’s Earthquake,” “The Brown House” and “The Legend of Miss Sasagawara,” all based on the experiences of the Issei immigrants and their Nisei children.  “Hot Summer Winds,” a drama based on two of Yamamoto’s stories, was aired on PBS in 1991, and she was featured in “Rabbit in the Moon,” a 1999 documentary about the internment.

Speakers will include King-Kok Cheung, author of “Articulate Silences: Hisaye Yamamoto, Maxine Hong Kingston, Joy Kogawa”; Wakako Yamauchi, author of the play “And the Soul Shall Dance” and the book “Songs My Mother Taught Me”; and Mitsuye Yamada, author of “Desert Run: Poems and Stories” and “Camp Notes and Other Poems.”  Naomi Hirahara, author of the Mas Arai mystery series, and other members of Pacific Asian American Women Writers West will read excerpts from Yamamoto’s works.

The Japanese American Cultural and Community Center and the Aratani Endowed Chair, Asian American Studies Center, UCLA, are co-presenting the event.

The event is free and open to the public, but RSVPs are requested for planning purposes.  For more information, contact J.K. Yamamoto at (213)629-2231, ext. 148, or yamamotojk@gmail.com.