JANM Announces Fall 2023 Book Club Authors

LOS ANGELES, CA – The Japanese American National Museum (JANM) announces the lineup of authors for the fall 2023 JANM Book Club, a public program series that highlights new publications by Japanese Americans or related to Japanese American history and culture. The featured authors are Naomi Hirahara, Eric L. Muller, Gwen Muranaka, and Dr. ShiPu Wang. Tickets for each program are $16 ($9 for seniors and students, free to JANM Members) and are available at janm.org/events.

Saturday, September 9, 2023
Evergreen with Naomi Hirahara
2 p.m.–3:30 p.m. 

Edgar Award–winning author, Naomi Hirahara, dives into the history of Little Tokyo through her newest book, Evergreen. Evergreen, the follow-up to the Mary Higgins Clark Award–winning Clark and Division, is the story of a Japanese American nurse’s aide who navigates the dangers of post–World War II and post-Manzanar life as she attempts to find justice for a broken family. Hirahara’s presentation will include photographs from 1946 Little Tokyo, Boyle Heights, and Burbank trailer parks. This event will include an optional self-guided tour of Little Tokyo landmarks featured in the book. 

Saturday, October 7, 2023 
Lawyer, Jailer, Ally, Foe with Eric Muller
2 p.m.–3:30 p.m.

Eric L. Muller, Dan K. Moore Distinguished Professor of Law in Jurisprudence and Ethics at University of North Carolina School of Law, and Mia Yamamoto, criminal defense attorney and daughter of Elmer Yamamoto, a lawyer in the Poston concentration camp, will discuss Lawyer, Jailer, Ally, Foe: Complicity and Conscience in America's World War II Concentration Camps and the issues of justice, ethics, and race that emerge from Muller’s work. During World War II, the US federal government placed a white lawyer at each of the ten concentration camps with contradictory instructions: provide legal counsel to the Japanese American incarcerees, and keep the place running. In Lawyer, Jailer, Ally, Foe Muller brings to vivid life the stories of three of these men, illuminating a shameful episode of American history through imaginative narrative grounded in archival evidence. 

Saturday, November 18, 2023
Drawing by Heart with Gwen Muranaka
2 p.m.–3:30 p.m. 

Gwen Muranaka will discuss her book, Drawing by Heart: Cartoons from the Pen of Gwen Muranaka. Muranaka is a fourth generation Japanese American and is senior editor of The Rafu Shimpo, the oldest and largest bilingual Japanese newspaper in the United States. For the last twenty years, she has covered numerous events in the Southern California Japanese American community. Throughout her journalism career, Muranaka has drawn cartoons, including “Noodles,” published weekly in the Japan Times in Tokyo and “Small Kid Time” for Pacific Citizen. Currently she illustrates “Dad’s Three Cats” for The Hawaii Herald and The Rafu Shimpo.

Sunday, November 26, 2023
Pictures of Belonging with ShiPu Wang

Dr. ShiPu Wang, curator of JANM’s nationally traveling exhibition, Pictures of Belonging: Miki Hayakawa, Hisako Hibi, and Miné Okubo, will sign the accompanying catalog on Museum Store Sunday. Spanning eight decades, Pictures of Belonging reveals a broader picture of the American experience through the artworks and life stories of three trailblazing Japanese American women in dialogue with each other for the first time.

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About the Japanese American National Museum (JANM)

Established in 1985, JANM promotes understanding and appreciation of America’s ethnic and cultural diversity by sharing the Japanese American experience. Located in the historic Little Tokyo district of downtown Los Angeles, JANM is a center for civil rights, ensuring that the hard-fought lessons of the World War II incarceration are not forgotten. A Smithsonian Affiliate and one of America’s Cultural Treasures, JANM is a hybrid institution that straddles traditional museum categories. JANM is a center for the arts as well as history. It provides a voice for Japanese Americans and a forum that enables all people to explore their own heritage and culture. Since opening to the public in 1992, JANM has presented over 100 exhibitions onsite while traveling 40 exhibits to venues such as the Smithsonian Institution and the Ellis Island Museum in the United States, and to several leading cultural museums in Japan and South America. JANM is open on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday–Sunday from 11 a.m.–5 p.m. and on Thursday from 12 p.m.–8 p.m. JANM is free every third Thursday of the month. On all other Thursdays, JANM is free from 5 p.m.–8 p.m. For more information, visit janm.org or follow us on social media @jamuseum.