AUTHOR KAREN YAMASHITA TO DISCUSS LATEST BOOK, 'I HOTEL', ON SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 18

Novel Recalls Asian American Movement in the 1960s, 1970s With 10 Novellas

Award-winning writer and novelist Karen Tei Yamashita will read from and discuss her latest book, I Hotel, at the Japanese American National Museum in Little Tokyo on Saturday, September 18, beginning at 2 p.m.

Yamashita, who came to prominence with her novel, Through the Arc of the Rain Forest (1990), is also author of Brazil-Maru (1992), Tropic of Orange (1997) and Circle K Cycles (2001). Her latest book is organized as 10 novellas, each focusing on a single year between 1968 and 1977 and all connected to the San Francisco landmark, the International Hotel. Each of the stories relates to the Asian American movement through the eyes of a diverse group of participants.

One reviewer summarizes as follows: "As this jazzy, kaleidoscopic novel unfolds, we meet orphaned teenager Paul and his mentor Chen, a radical professor; Mo Akagi, a Yellow Panther; Gerald, an avant-garde saxophonist; Sandy Hu, an innovative choreographer; and all kinds of gutsy and inventive activists, some in wheelchairs, who comprise a broad spectrum of courageous Asian Americans asserting their rights."

Some of the characters are based on real people or are composites of different individuals. Yamashita also inserts actual well-known figures into her pieces, including prominent literary rivals Maxine Hong Kingston and Frank Chin and then San Francisco State President S.I. Hayakawa. The book ends with the fight to save the International Hotel from the wrecking ball.

I Hotel also places the events in historic context, revealing, as one reviewer writes, "how the civil rights movement intertwines the Black Panthers, Yellow Power, the Indian takeover of Alcatraz, the formation of the United Farm Workers, protests against nuclear proliferation, and the rights of the disabled - and the fascinating contributions of Asian Americans in each."

Born in Oakland and raised in Gardena, Yamashita received her degree in English and Japanese literature from Carleton College in Minnesota, having spent a year in Japan as an exchange student at Waseda University. A Thomas J. Watson Fellowship in 1974 enabled her to live in Brazil to study Japanese immigration to that country. Today, she is an associate professor of literature at the University of California at Santa Cruz.

This program is free to National Museum members or with admission.