Frank Abe with Vince Schleitwiler on Japanese American Incarceration

Third Place Books is thrilled to welcome editor and writer Frank Abe to our Seward Park store! Abe will be discussing his contributions as editor of the Penguin Classics anthology The Literature of Japanese American Incarceration, and will be joined in conversation by Vince Schleitwiler, professor of comparative ethnic studies and Japanese American studies at the University of Washington. This event is free and open to the public.

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This event is free to attend. Registration is required in advance.

“An essential volume” —Hua Hsu, The New Yorker
The collective voice of Japanese Americans defined by a specific moment in time: the four years of World War II during which the US government expelled resident aliens and its own citizens from their homes and imprisoned 125,000 of them in American concentration camps, based solely upon the race they shared with a wartime enemy.
A Penguin Classic
This anthology presents a new vision that recovers and reframes the literature produced by the people targeted by the actions of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Congress to deny Americans of Japanese ancestry any individual hearings or other due process after the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor. From nearly seventy selections of fiction, poetry, essays, memoirs, and letters emerges a shared story of the struggle to retain personal integrity in the face of increasing dehumanization – all anchored by the key government documents that incite the action.
The selections favor the pointed over the poignant, and the unknown over the familiar, with several new translations among previously unseen works that have been long overlooked on the shelf, buried in the archives, or languished unread in the Japanese language. The writings are presented chronologically so that readers can trace the continuum of events as the incarcerees experienced it.
The contributors span incarcerees, their children born in or soon after the camps, and their descendants who reflect on the long-term consequences of mass incarceration for themselves and the nation. Many of the voices are those of protest. Some are those of accommodation. All are authentic. Together they form an epic narrative with a singular vision of America’s past, one with disturbing resonances with the American present.

Frank Abe is co-editor with Floyd Cheung of a new anthology, The Literature of Japanese American Incarceration, from Penguin Classics. He is lead author of a graphic novel, We Hereby Refuse: Japanese American Resistance to Wartime Incarceration (Chin Music Press, 2021), named a Finalist in Creative Nonfiction for the Washington State Book Award. He won an American Book Award as co-editor of John Okada: The Life & Rediscovered Work of the Author of No-No Boy (University of Washington Press, 2018), in which he authored the first-ever biography of Okada and traced the origins of his novel. He wrote and directed the award-winning PBS documentary Conscience and the Constitution and helped organize the first-ever “Day of Remembrance.” He’s worked as a reporter for KIRO Newsradio and a writer for King County Executives Dow Constantine, Ron Sims, and Gary Locke, and been supported with writing residencies at Centrum, Willapa Bay AiR, and the Mineral School.
Vince Schleitwiler teaches comparative ethnic studies and Japanese American studies at the University of Washington. He is the author of Strange Fruit of the Black Pacific, and his writing has appeared in African American Review, Amerasia Journal, The Margins, the International Examiner, and elsewhere. A Yonsei, or fourth-generation Japanese American, he is a descendent of incarcerees at Salinas, Santa Anita, and Poston. (Photo credit: Kayla Isomura)

Founded in 1998 in Lake Forest Park, Washington, Third Place Books is dedicated to the creation of a community around books and the ideas inside them. With locations in Lake Forest Park and Seattle's Ravenna and Seward Park neighborhoods, Third Place Books is proud to serve the entire Seattle metro area. Learn more about their event series at thirdplacebooks.com/events.

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