Asian and Asian American Studies: Focus on: Oregon

In this exquisite story of family, food, grief, and endurance, Michelle Zauner proves herself far more than a dazzling singer, songwriter, and guitarist. With humor and heart, she tells of growing up the only Asian-American kid at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother's particular, high expectations of her; of a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her grandmother's tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother would bond, late at night, over heaping plates of food.

Who were the pioneers of the American West? Some of them we already know: They came across North America on horseback, in covered wagons, on foot, or sailed from the Atlantic to the Pacific; they were European Americans. Lesser known are the immigrants who, by the 1850s, began sailing east from Southern China, primarily from the Guangdong Province. They arrived in the American West port towns of California, Oregon, and Washington. These Chinese, fleeing the hardships at home, sought the same prosperity as all immigrants to America.

William "Bill" Sumio Naito (1925-1996) was a remarkable and visionary individual--the Portland-born son of Japanese immigrants who became one of the city's most significant business and civic leaders. Every day thousands of people drive on Naito Parkway alongside Portland's Waterfront Park, yet little has been written about the man for whom it was named. In this first biography, Erica Naito-Campbell, Bill's granddaughter, shows how his story is also the story of Portland, the city he loved. Naito's life, from the Great Depression and World War II through Portland's rebirth in the 1970s and its profound growth, tracked most of the major events in the city and was the catalyst for many of them.

Stubborn Twig is the story of one Japanese American family's century-long struggle to adjust, endure and ultimately triumph in their new country. Masuo Yasui arrived in America in 1903 with big dreams and empty pockets. He worked on the railroads, in a cannery and as a houseboy before settling in Hood River, Oregon, to open a store, raise a large family and become one of the area's most successful orchardists. As Masuo tried to break the color barrier in the local.

They Never Asked is a collection of work produced by Bara Ginsha members in the WCCA camp, based on a journal kept by Masaki Kinoshita. The senryu collected here were written by a group of twenty-two poets, who produced hundreds of poems. Individually, the poems reflect the thoughts and feelings the authors experienced while being detained in the center; collectively, they reflect the resilience and resistance of a community denied freedom.

ersonal documents, art, propaganda, and stories express the Japanese American experience in concentration camps after the bombing of Pearl Harbor--Publisher's description.