Honorable Mention of the 1999 Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Awards
Two collections by an important Asian American writer -- Camp Notes and Other Poeems and Desert Run: Poems and Stories -- return to print in one volume.
Mitsuye Yamada was born in Kyushu, Japan, and raised in Seattle, Washington, until the outbreak of World War II when her family was removed to a concentration camp in Idaho. Camp Notes and Other Writings recounts this experience.
Yamada's poetry yields a terse blend of emotions and imagery. Her twist of words creates a twist of vision that make her poetry come alive. The weight of her cultural experience-the pain of being perceived as an outsider all of her life-permeates her work.
Yamada's strength as a poet stems from the fact that she has managed to integrate both individual and collective aspects of her background, giving her poems a double impact. Her strong portrayal of individual and collective life experience stands out as a distinct thread in the fabric of contemporary literature by women.
"The core poems of Camp Notes and the title come from the notes I had taken when I was in camp, and it wasn’t published until thirty years after most of it was written. I was simply describing what was happening to me, and my thoughts. But, in retrospect, the collection takes on a kind of expanded meaning about that period in our history. As invariably happens, because Japanese American internment became such an issue in American history, I suppose I will be forever identified as the author of Camp Notes. Of course, I try to show that it’s not the only thing I ever did in my whole life; I did other things besides go to an internment camp during World War II. So, in some ways I keep producing to counteract that one image that gets set in the public mind. At the time that I was writing it, I wasn’t necessarily a political person. Now, when I reread it, even to myself, I think it probably has a greater warning about the dangers of being not aware, not aware of one’s own rights, not aware of helping other people who may be in trouble. I think that it does speak to our present age very acutely." -- Mitsuye Yamada, "You should not be invisible”: An Interview with Mitsuye Yamada, Contemporary Women's Writing, March 2014, Vol. 8 Issue 1
Read the whole interview at: https://academic.oup.com/cww/article/8/1/1/414906/You-should-not-be-invisible-An-Interview-with
As the old adage goes, "if you can't say it in a few pages, you won't in a hundred." The selections in Cold Flashes—very short prose and black-and-white photographs—embody perfectly this transparency, thrift, and restraint. Found here are highly polished micro-narratives, both fiction and nonfiction, and a series of eloquent and artistic halftones that capture their sizeable subjects in a nutshell. By minimizing the exposition, the selections stimulate the imagination to reflect on the rich diversity of people and places that make up Alaska. To be savored piecemeal at coffee shops, on the bus, or while waiting in line, the images and text in Cold Flashes will resonate with both the reader and each other, fusing into something profound yet elusive.
This book is the definitive collection of the writings of Wallace Thurman (1902-1934), providing a comprehensive anthology of both the published and unpublished works of this bohemian, bisexual writer. Widely regarded as the enfant terrible of the Harlem Renaissance scene, Thurman was a leader among a group of young artists and intellectuals that included, among others, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Bruce Nugent, Gwendolyn Bennett, and Aaron Douglas. Through the publication of magazines such as FIRE!! and Harlem: A Forum of Negro Life, Thurman tried to organize the opposition of the younger generation against the programmatic and promotional ideologies of the older generation of black leaders and intellectuals such as W.E.B. Du Bois and Benjamin Brawley. Thurman also left a permanent mark on the period through his prolific work as a novelist, playwright, short story writer, and literary critic, as well as by claiming for himself a voice as a public intellectual.
The Collected Writings of Wallace Thurman is divided into eight sections to highlight the variety of genres and styles Thurman practiced as he courageously pursued controversial subjects throughout his short and brilliant career. It includes Essays on Harlem, Social Essays and Journalism, Correspondence, Literary Essays and Reviews, Poetry and Short Fiction, Plays, and Excerpts from Novel.
Filling an important gap in Harlem Renaissance literature, this collection brings together all of Thurman’s essays, nearly all of his letters to major black and white figures of the 1920s, and three previously unpublished major works. These books are Aunt Hagar’s Children, which is a collection of essays and two full-length plays, Harlem, and Jeremiah the Magnificent. The introduction to the volume, along with the carefully researched introductory notes to each of the eight sections, provides a challenging new reevaluation of Thurman and the Harlem Renaissance for both the general reader and scholar.
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