Author: Hisaye Yamamoto
Introduction by: King-Kok Cheung
Subject: Literature/Asian American Studies /Women's Studies
Paperback ISBN 0-8135-2607-8
Pages: 150 pp.
Description: A classic collection of short stories of Japanese American life returns to print.
Seventeen Syllables and Other Stories now brings together nineteen stories that span Hisaye Yamamotos forty-year career. Yamamotos themes include the cultural conflicts between the first generation, the Issei, and their children, the Nisei; coping with prejudice; and the World War II internment of Japanese Americans.
In addition to the contents of the original volume, this edition brings back into print the following works:
Death Rides the Rails to Poston
Eucalyptus
A Fire in Fontana
Florentine Gardens
Hisaye Yamamoto received the 1986 American Book Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Before Columbus Foundation. Seventeen Syllables received the 1988 Award for Literature from the Association for Asian American Studies.
Praise for Seventeen Syllables
"These remarkable stories are written with the proportion and craft of the mastersthere are hints of Chekhov, Elizabeth Bowen, Katherine Mansfield, and Grace Paley. . . . Each of the . . . short stories, written with the economy of haiku, is a treasure."Booklist
"The writing of history and the telling of stories are in our time very different. But these stories about the daily lives of Japanese American women in and out of the World War II internment camps of the United States are history and herstory. The women are gutsy or fragilethat is, like any of us would be caught in exile while at home. The stories are beautifully written so we feel them even more deeply."Grace Paley
