In 2010, Yamashita’s “I Hotel,” a novel set in San Francisco’s Chinatown in the 1960s and ’70s, won the American Book Award for diversity and was a finalist for the National Book Award.
An aunt on her father’s side worked with a Quaker, John Nason, who got students out of camps and relocated them to colleges and universities. Her mother, who was single at the time, got a job at the Minneapolis YWCA. She explained that Japanese-Americans in internment camps (where both her parents were imprisoned), could be relocated if they found jobs in the Midwest or East. In a Pioneer Press interview when “Through the Arc of the Rain Forest” was published, California native Yamashita said she studied English and Japanese literature in Minnesota because of America’s treatment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. She is married to Brazilian architect and artist Ronaldo Oliveira and their son and daughter were born there. Yamashita’s career began with her 1990 novel “Through the Arc of the Rain Forest,” about a Japanese ex-pat living in Brazil amid an environmental crisis because all the crud in the world has leaked onto the floor of the decimated rain forest, creating a hard, shiny and smooth field of plastic that promises whole new vistas of exploitation.īrazil has influenced Yamashita’s life because she lived there for 10 years, researching the history and anthropology of the country’s big population of Japanese immigrants. In her acceptance speech, the Carleton College graduate said the award was especially significant to her community, given how the past year has been plagued by anti-Asian violence and hatred. 17 awards ceremony: “A bold and groundbreaking writer, (Japanese-American) Yamashita’s deeply creative body of work has made an enduring impact on our literary landscape.” Karen Tei Yamashita (Courtesy photo)įoundation chair David Steinberger said in a prepared statemen for the Nov.
Kudos also to Minneapolis-based Coffee House Press for publishing all eight of her books. Congratulations to Karen Tei Yamashita for winning the 2021 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, conferred by the National Book Foundation.
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