Browse > Genre > Fiction
44 articles
- 1
- 2
Manzanar Rites (book)
- Books
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Fiction, History
- Coming of age, Evils of racism, Rights - individual or societal, Vulnerability of the strong
- Limited availability
Coming of age novel by William Hohri about two teenage boys from West Los Angeles who end up at Manzanar with their families.
Maybe (short story)
- Short Stories
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Fiction
- Capitalism – effect on the individual, Necessity of work, Will to survive, Working class struggles
- Widely available
Short story by Wakako Yamauchi about a middle-aged Japanese American woman working in a sweatshop with a group of undocumented immigrant workers from Latin America. Divorced after twenty-five years of marriage, Florence wanders into a garment factory with a help wanted sign and is hired on the spot and given a relatively responsible position despite her lack of qualifications due to what she thinks is the owners' stereotype about "Japanese." In her first person voice, she introduces various workers as well as the owner's much younger Colombian immigrant wife who takes an immediate disliking to her. She befriends a young couple who were forced to leave their young son back in Mexico and are unable to bring him to the U.S.; the husband semi-jokingly asks Florence to marry him so that he can get a green card. At the end of the story she recalls her and her family's confinement …
Mitsugi's Christmas (short story)
- Short Stories
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Fiction
- Family – blessing or curse, Forgiveness, Love and sacrifice, Optimism – power or folly
- No availability
Short story by Jennifer "Emiko" Kuida about Mitsugi Yamamoto, an elderly widower at the Keiro Retirement Home in Los Angeles who waits to hear from his busy lawyer daughter and his grandchildren on Christmas Day. Julia, a younger Yonsei volunteer nurse, keeps him company sometimes and listens to his stories of the past, particularly his time at Seabrook Farms, New Jersey , where he and his wife Sumi moved after leaving Manzanar .
My Mother's Music (short story)
- Short Stories
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Fiction
- Power of the past, Power of silence, Role of women
- Limited availability
Short story by Lydia Yuri Minatoya told from the perspective of a Sansei woman recalling her Kibei mother's various stories—and silences—about the family history. The narrator's mother recalls her Issei mother's banishment from the family after she had an affair with a Filipino immigrant patron of the family-run pool hall and how she never saw her mother again. The mother also recalls her own arranged marriage while in Heart Mountain , but can recall little—or is unwilling to talk about—details of her and her family's wartime incarceration. My Mother's Music appeared in the fifth volume of the Fusion series published by the Asian American Studies Department at San Francisco State University. Minatoya later published a memoir titled Talking to High Monks in the Snow: An Asian-American Odyssey (1989)—which includes "My Mother's Music" as its first chapter—as well as a novel, The Strangeness of Beauty (2001).
Reunion (short story)
- Short Stories
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Fiction
- Lost love, Rebirth, Reunion
- No availability
Short story by Hisaye Yamamoto centering on a Nisei man named Tak who attends a pilgrimage to Poston , where he had been incarcerated during the war. The story begins with his noticing a striking woman at the reunion dressed in buckskin; he wonders if she is Native American. A visit to the memorial at the site conjures memories of his family's wartime experience: removed from Los Angeles, they left Poston to resettle in Chicago ; his older sister had left earlier on her own to study nursing in Cleveland. He went to high school in Chicago and to college back in Los Angeles, eventually marrying and raising three daughters. But after his wife's death just a year prior, he found himself alone. On the bus ride home, he is surprised to find the buckskin woman on the same bus. She sits across the aisle from him, and he overhears …
Heiji (short story)
- Short Stories
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Fiction
- Female roles, Injustice, Power of the past
- No availability
Short story by Jeff Tsuyoshi Matsuda about a disheveled elderly Nisei widower who goes to a empty field in his Westchester, California, neighborhood every day for reasons that no one can figure out. In slowly revealing the reason for his quest, Heiji Taguma's wartime family history is revealed. His family had farmed twenty acres in the area before the war, but lost their crops and their farm in the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. Heiji's father Masu was among the Issei arrested by the FBI and was taken to the Bismarck , North Dakota internment camp, eventually rejoining his family at Manzanar . But he returned a broken man: while Heiji resettled in Chicago , he refused to leave Manzanar and died there just after the end of the war. Heiji's odd ritual seemed to have been triggered by the death of his wife Keiko, who …
Homecoming (short story)
- Short Stories
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Fiction
- Love and sacrifice, Motherhood, Wisdom of experience
- Widely available
Short story by Toshio Mori about an Issei woman's first visit with her son Mamoru after he has been severely wounded in combat as a member of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team . "Homecoming" takes the form of a story told in the woman's first person voice to her grandchildren. It is one of several stories by Mori featuring the same woman published in the Pacific Citizen between 1949 and 1952 that later became the basis of his novel Woman from Hiroshima , published in 1978. The first half of the story is about her efforts to see her son after being allowed to leave Topaz to return to the West Coast . She is at first dismayed to learn that he has been moved to a military hospital in Auburn, California, known to be a hotbed of anti-Japanese racism. Arriving in Auburn, they see numerous anti-Japanese signs and are …
America's Betrayal (book)
- Books
- Grades 7-8, Grades 9-12
- Grades 7-8
- Fiction, History
- Coming of age, Companionship as salvation, Everlasting love, Evils of racism, Female roles, Losing hope, Will to survive
- Limited availability
Young adult novel by Jodi Icenoggle written in the first person voice of Margaret Yamaguchi, a high school sophomore and aspiring writer in Valle Verde in coastal California. Her father runs a successful orchard and oversees a happy family that includes Margaret's mother, an older brother Robert, and younger brother Timmy. She has also started going steady with John Wilson, star athlete of Valle Verde High. But her happy life is slowly torn apart by the outbreak of war. As anti-Japanese sentiment rises after the attack on Pearl Harbor, so do tensions at the high school, particularly for an interracial couple like John and Margaret. Inevitably, the Yamaguchis get sent first to the Salinas Assembly Center , then to Poston , while John gets drafted. As family tragedies ensue, Margaret comes of age in the concentration camp, starting a camp newspaper and waiting for John to come back. But will …
A Question of Loyalty/The Betrayed (play)
- Plays
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Fiction
- Limited availability
Play authored by Nisei playwright Hiroshi Kashiwagi set in Tule Lake and centered on the dilemmas brought on by the loyalty questionnaire . The main characters are Tak Fujimoto, a country boy loosely based on the playwright, and Grace Tamura, a sophisticated city girl from Seattle, who fall in love in the concentration camp. But they are divided by the loyalty questions and go their separate ways. The play's second act is set forty years later, when Grace, a widowed redress activist from Chicago, visits Tak, a divorced farmer in Fresno, prior to a camp reunion.
Gasa-Gasa Girl (book)
- Books
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Adult
- Fiction, Mystery
- Family – blessing or curse, Greed as downfall, Power of the past
- Widely available
The second mystery novel in Naomi Hirahara's "Mas Arai Mysteries" series, Gasa-Gasa Girl finds the Kibei crime solver in New York where he reconciles with his estranged daughter and unravels the mysterious death of a wealthy Nisei businessman.
The Floating World (book)
- Books
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Fiction
- Coming of age, Family – blessing or curse, Female roles, Working class struggles, Growing up – pain or pleasure
- Widely available
Acclaimed coming-of-age novel largely set on the road centering on Olivia Osaka and her itinerant family in the 1950s.
Sayonara Slam (book)
- Books
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Adult
- Fiction, Mystery
- Power of silence, Power of the past, Family – blessing or curse
- Widely available
The sixth book in Naomi Hirahara's Mas Arai Mysteries series finds the Kibei gardener caught up in unraveling the mysterious death of a Japanese journalist covering the World Baseball Classic in Los Angeles. As in the other books in the series, Mas's Hiroshima hibakusha past and the wartime incarceration of Japanese Americans play key roles in the plot.
Nurse (short story)
- Short Stories
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Fiction
- Communication – verbal and nonverbal, Hazards of passing judgment
- Available
Short story by Masaharu Hane centering on an Issei man on a train in the Southwest during World War II. Spotting a Nisei young woman fellow passenger—one of the few "Japanese" on the train—sitting next to a white soldier, the narrator passes time on the trip by conjuring various unlikely scenarios that explain her travel circumstances, before learning the rather mundane truth. Originally published in a Poston Japanese language literary publication, "Nurse" was included in the 1991 literary anthology The Big Aiiieeeee!
The Old Man on Crutches (short story)
- Short Stories
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Fiction
- Companionship as salvation, Power of words, Wisdom of experience
- Limited availability
Short story by Setsuko Nagata about the title character whom the narrator meets while serving as a waitress at a Tanforan Assembly Center mess hall. The man, named Mr. Mine, takes a liking to the narrator and shares Chinese poetry with her. When they move to the Topaz , Utah, concentration camp, he visits her on occasion, but when he requests repatriation, he moves to Tule Lake . The narrator hears that he eventually did return to his native Kumamoto, Japan.
Famous Suicides of the Japanese Empire (book)
- Books
- Adult
- Fiction
- Coming of age, Dangers of ignorance, Power of silence, Power of the past
- Widely available
First novel by acclaimed poet and memoirist David Mura that explores the impact of wartime incarceration—and the silences about it—on a Japanese American family in Chicago after World War II.
California Generation (book)
- Books
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Fiction
- Coming of age, Identity crisis
- Limited availability
Popular 1970 novel by Jacqueline Briskin that follows a group of students from the class of 1960 at fictitious California High—one of them a Sansei born in Topaz —through the touchstone events of the turbulent decade. Though a first novel, California Generation was widely promoted and launched Briskin's career as a best-selling novelist.
Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet (book)
- Books
- Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
- Grades 6-8
- Fiction
- Family - blessing or curse, Growing up - pain or pleasure, Evils of racism, Lost love
- Widely available
Bestselling 2009 novel by Jamie Ford about a doomed romance between a young Chinese American boy and a Japanese American girl in 1942 Seattle.
21st Century Manzanar (book)
- Books
- Adult
- Fiction
- Evils of racism, Importance of community, Overcoming – fear, weakness, vice, Will to survive
- Available
Novel by Perry Miyake that imagines an early 21st century roundup of Japanese Americans and how Sansei and Yonsei would react to it.
Home Again (book)
- Books
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Fiction
- Character - destruction and building up, Displacement, Evils of racism
- Available
A 1955 novel that tells the epic story of one Japanese American family from California, covering their prewar travails, their wartime incarceration, and their return to California after the war. The book was based in part on the experiences of the author's father, a former War Relocation Authority (WRA) resettlement officer.
- 1
- 2