Work Isn’t All Hardship: Talking with Kikuko Tsumura
Kikuko Tsumura discusses her newly translated novel, THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS AN EASY JOB.
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Posts Tagged: Japanese
Both Trauma and Sin: Elizabeth Miki Brina’s Speak, Okinawa
Speak, Okinawa is masterful at describing the internal dissonance that mixed race children can feel.
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Landscape as Mindscape: A Conversation with Michael Prior
Michael Prior discusses his new collection of poetry, BURNING PROVENCE.
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Wingtips and Shell-Toes
There was a right way and a wrong way to do things, and those shoes were wrong.
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On Relic and Recovery: A Conversation with Kimiko Hahn
Poet Kimiko Hahn discusses her new collection, FOREIGN BODIES.
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Homage as Provocation: Karen Tei Yamashita’s Sansei and Sensibility
Pretend you are Austen. Enact an Austen novel. And what will happen?
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Cultural Attunement and “Otherness”: A Conversation with Aimee Liu
Aimee Liu discusses her new novel, GLORIOUS BOY.
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A Space for Magnanimity: Talking with E. J. Koh
E. J. Koh discusses her debut memoir, THE MAGICAL LANGUAGE OF OTHERS.
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Wanted/Needed/Loved: Sanae Yamada’s Favorite Foods
It’s beyond comfort food. And when I’m out on the road it’s a signifier of home.
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Angry Reminders: Lee Ann Roripaugh’s Tsunami vs. the Fukushima 50
Human beings like to make myths out of things we don’t understand.
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Beginning Again: Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous
For Little Dog, putting language to memory becomes a way to survive.
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Rumpus Exclusive: An Excerpt from A Student of History
It was both daunting and thrilling, all the more surreal because it happened in a place I knew.
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VISIBLE: Women Writers of Color: Tamiko Nimura
Tamiko Nimura talks about the influence of history, memory, and silence on her work; creating a private MFA for herself; and writing a generational memoir.
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Family Is the Deepest Scar: Minae Mizumura’s Inheritance from Mother
With each word, I found myself thinking of my own grandmother’s journey, escaping war to America with no money, no education, and six children, the pain of this experience inevitably hardening the whole family.
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The Rumpus Interview with Joe Ide
Joe Ide discusses his debut novel, IQ his writing process, and why he enjoys fly fishing.
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The Rumpus Poetry Book Club Chat with Chris Santiago
Chris Santigo on his new collection Tula, writing a multilingual text, and the connections between music and writing poetry.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: Rhino Girl
But these were not men, she realized. They were a cackle of spotted hyena, bright-toothed in the dark, and they were laughing at her.
...moreThis Week in Indie Bookstores
Livraria Folha Seca in Rio de Janeiro was told that a sign about two-time medalist Adhemar Ferreira Silva, who passed away in 2001, violated the Olympic Committee’s advertising policies. Reuters attempts to answer why millennials love buying books. Inmates from Two Bridges Jail are helping the Wiscasset, Maine public library build bookshelves for a used bookstore.
...moreThis Week in Short Fiction
Some people write about dystopian futures, or reimagined folktales, or ghosts, or science fiction. Sequoia Nagamatsu, author of the upcoming story collection Where We Go When All We Were Is Gone, does it all. The debut collection, out this month from Black Lawrence Press, weaves Japanese folklore and pop culture into fantastical plots and futuristic […]
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A Japanese Heart
If you follow the script, people will judge you as having a genuine Japanese heart.
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The Slow Fall of the Hot Heroine
If nothing else, it’s the opinion of other women that encroaches on mine. Resemblances spark my joy; differences become character flaws.
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The Ant and the Grasshopper Can Coexist
Of course, it’s not only parents who teach us about gender roles. Sometimes it feels like we’re absorbing them with our first gasps from the womb.
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The Rumpus Interview with Sanae Ishida
Sanae Ishida discusses her debut children’s book, Little Kunoichi, The Ninja Girl, embracing her creativity after years in the corporate world, and finding inspiration in her young daughter.
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The Rumpus Interview with Jay Rubin
Author and translator Jay Rubin talks about his new novel, The Sun Gods, translating Haruki Murakami into English, and the internment of Japanese citizens during World War II.
...moreSlow and Steady
It took Gene Oishi 50 years to write his debut novel, a story about Japanese American identity and family during and after World War II. Over at The Nervous Breakdown, Oishi interviews himself about the process of writing Fox Drum Bebop: I had a lot of excuses, but the reason I didn’t want to write […]
...moreJapanese-American Zoot-Suiters Subverted Pretty Much Everything
Conflicts between “rowdies” and other prisoners interrupted the daily routines of several, if not all, the camps. At the Gila River camp in Arizona, for instance, the editors of the center’s newspaper complained that zoot suiters had swiped all the chains from the laundry sinks to use as watch chains. Nikkei Chicago’s Ellen Wu has […]
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