Hisaye Yamamoto

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Hisaye Yamamoto
Born 1921
Redondo Beach, California
Nationality USA
Genres short story
Notable work(s) Seventeen Syllables and Other Stories
Notable award(s) American Book Award, Lifetime Achievement.

Hisaye Yamamoto (b. 1921) is a Japanese American writer of short stories.

Contents

[edit] Biography and career

Born in Redondo Beach, California, Yamamoto is a Nisei, a Japanese-American whose parents were born in Japan. She was interned in the Poston War Relocation Center during the Second World War, where she wrote for camp publications and began to publish her first short fiction. Her postwar career included journalism and urban-mission work, after which she spent many years as a homemaker in Los Angeles, California. Though she had no academic writing career and earned little from the sale of her fiction, she continued to write and publish short stories, several of which are frequently anthologized, taught in college curricula, and discussed by literary scholars.

Yamamoto has discussed the difficulties she has finding time to write:

"Most of the time I am cleaning house, or cooking or doing yard work. Very little time is spent writing. But if somebody told me I couldn't write, it would probably grieve me very much" [1].

Yamamoto's stories have compared to haiku, "layered in metaphor, imagery, and irony, but never wordy or given to digression." [2] She has also been praised "for her subtle realizations of gender and sexual relationships."[3]

In 1986 Yamamoto won the Before Columbus Foundation's American Book Award for Lifetime Achievement.

[edit] Notable individual works

  • "Seventeen Syllables" story (1949)
  • "The Legend of Miss Sasagawara" story (1950)
  • "Yoneko's Earthquake" story (1951)
  • "Las Vegas Charlie" story
  • "A Fire in Fontana" story (1985)
  • Seventeen Syllables and Other Stories (collection)

[edit] References

  1. ^ Crow, Charles L. "A MELUS Interview: Hisaye Yamamoto." MELUS 14.1 (Spring 1987): 73-84.
  2. ^ Thalheimer, Anne N. Review of Seventeen Syllables. MELUS 24.4 (Winter 1999): 177-179.
  3. ^ Wong, Sau-ling C., and Jeffrey J. Santa Ana. "Gender and Sexuality in Asian American Literature," Signs 25.1 (1999): 171-226.
  • Cheung, King-Kok. "Introduction," in Hisaye Yamamoto, Seventeen Syllables and Other Stories (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2001): ix-xxiii.
  • Cheung, King-Kok. Articulate Silences: Hisaye Yamamoto, Maxine Hong Kingston, Joy Kogawa (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993).
  • Crow, Charles L. "A MELUS Interview: Hisaye Yamamoto." MELUS 14.1 (Spring 1987): 73-84.
  • Thalheimer, Anne N. Review of Seventeen Syllables. MELUS 24.4 (Winter 1999): 177-179.
  • Wong, Sau-ling C., and Jeffrey J. Santa Ana. "Gender and Sexuality in Asian American Literature," Signs 25.1 (1999): 171-226.

[edit] See also

Literature Portal

[edit] Critical Studies

(as of March 2008)

  1. Le forme della violenza: Il modernismo politico di Hisaye Yamamoto By: Izzo, Donatella. pp. 125-64 IN: Izzo, Suzie Wong non abita più qui: La letteratura delle minoranze asiatiche negli Stati Uniti. Milan, Italy: ShaKe; 2006.
  2. Re-Signed Subjects: Women, Work, and World in the Fiction of Carlos Bulosan and Hisaye Yamamoto By: Higashida, Cheryl. pp. 29-54 IN: Lim, Gamber, Sohn and Valentino, Transnational Asian American Literature: Sites and Transits. Philadelphia, PA: Temple UP; 2006. Also published in Studies in the Literary Imagination, 2004 Spring; 37 (1): 35-60.
  3. Shichuanyuan xiao jie de chuan qi zhong 'feng' de duo chong yi yi jie gou By: Zhou, Xiaogang; Foreign Literature Studies/Wai Guo Wen Xue Yan Jiu, 2005 Apr; 2 (112): 118-22, 175. (journal article)
  4. Hisaye Yamamoto By: Lee, A. Robert. pp. 327-31 IN: Madsen, Asian American Writers. Detroit, MI: Gale; 2005.
  5. 'Nothing Solid': Racial Identity and Identification in Fifth Chinese Daughter and 'Wilshire Bus' By: Motooka, Wendy. pp. 207-32 IN: Goldner, and Henderson-Holmes, Racing and (E)Racing Language: Living with the Color of Our Words. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse UP; 2001.
  6. Hisaye Yamomoto and Wakako Yamauchi By: Cheung, King-Kok. pp. 343-82 IN: Cheung, Words Matter: Conversations with Asian American Writers. Honolulu, HI: U of Hawaii P, with UCLA Asian American Studies Center; 2000.
  7. 'Something Forgotten Which Should Have Been Remembered': Private Property and Cross-Racial Solidarity in the Work of Hisaye Yamamoto By: Hong, Grace Kyungwon; American Literature: A Journal of Literary History, Criticism, and Bibliography, 1999 June; 71 (2): 291-310.
  8. Esther's Smile: Silence and Action in Hisye Yamamoto's 'Wilshire Bus' By: Mullins, Maire; Studies in Short Fiction, 1998 Winter; 35 (1): 77-84.
  9. Prison, Psyche, and Poetry in Hisaye Yamamoto's Three Short Stories: 'Seventeen Syllables,' 'The Legend of Miss Sasagawara,' and 'The Eskimo Connection' By: Usui, Masami; Studies in Culture and the Humanities, 1997; 6: 1-29.
  10. Issei Mothers' Silence, Nisei Daughters' Stories: The Short Fiction of Hisaye Yamamoto By: Sugiyama, Naoko; Comparative Literature Studies, 1996; 33 (1): 1-14.
  11. Reading between the Syllables: Hisaye Yamamoto's Seventeen Syllables and Other Stories By: Cheung, King-Kok. pp. 313-25 IN: Maitino, and Peck, Teaching American Ethnic Literatures: Nineteen Essays. Albuquerque: U of New Mexico P; 1996.
  12. The Dream in Flames: Hisaye Yamamoto, Multiculturalism, and the Lost Angeles Uprising By: Cheung, King-kok; Bucknell Review: A Scholarly Journal of Letters, Arts and Sciences, 1995; 39 (1): 118-30.
  13. The Unrepentant Fire: Tragic Limitations in Hisaye Yamamoto's 'Seventeen Syllables' By: Cheng, Ming L.; MELUS, 1994 Winter; 19 (4): 91-107.
  14. Adapting (to) the Margins: Hot Summer Winds and the Stories of Hisaye Yamamoto By: Payne, Robert M.; East-West Film Journal, 1993 July; 7 (2): 39-53.
  15. A Conversation with Hisaye Yamamoto By: Osborn, William P.; Chicago Review, 1993; 39 (3-4): 34-43.
  16. Articulate Silences: Hisaye Yamamoto, Maxine Hong Kingston, Joy Kogawa By: Cheung, King-kok. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP; 1993. xvi, 198 pp. (book)
  17. Rebels and Heroines: Subversive Narratives in the Stories of Wakako Yamauchi and Hisaye Yamamoto By: Yogi, Stan. pp. 131-50 IN: Lim, and Ling, Reading the Literatures of Asian America. Philadelphia: Temple UP; 1992.
  18. Thrice Muted Tale: Interplay of Art and Politics in Hisaye Yamamoto's 'The Legend of Miss Sasagawara' By: Cheung, King-kok; MELUS, 1991-1992 Fall; 17 (3): 109-25.
  19. Double-Telling: Intertextual Silence in Hisaye Yamamoto's Fiction By: Cheung, King-Kok; American Literary History, 1991 Summer; 3 (2): 277-93.
  20. 'Seventeen Syllables': A Symbolic Haiku By: Mistri, Zenobia Baxter; Studies in Short Fiction, 1990 Spring; 27 (2): 197-202.
  21. Legacies Revealed: Uncovering Buried Plots in the Stories of Hisaye Yamamoto By: Yogi, Stan; Studies in American Fiction, 1989 Autumn; 17 (2): 169-181.
  22. Seventeen Syllables and Other Stories Latham, NY: Kitchen Table: Women of Color P; 1988.
  23. A MELUS Interview: Hisaye Yamamoto By: Crow, Charles L.; MELUS, 1987 Spring; 14 (1): 73-84.
  24. The Issei Father in the Fiction of Hisaye Yamamoto By: Crow, Charles L.. pp. 34-40 IN: Truchlar, Für eine offene Literaturwissenschaft: Erkundungen und Eroprobungen am Beispiel US-amerikanischer Texte/Opening Up Literary Criticism: Essays on American Prose and Poetry. Salzburg: Neugebauer; 1986.
  25. Home and Transcendence in Los Angeles Fiction By: Crow, Charles L.. pp. 189-205 IN: Fine, Los Angeles in Fiction: A Collection of Original Essays. Albuquerque: U of New Mexico P; 1984.
  26. Relocation and Dislocation: The Writings of Hisaye Yamamoto and Wakako Yamauchi By: McDonald, Dorothy Ritsuko; MELUS, 1980 Fall; 7 (3): 21-38.


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