Tamiko Nimura discusses "A Place for What We Lose"

Tamiko Nimura will appear in conversation with Caitlin Oiye Coon and Shawn Wong.

About the Book:

In a moving conversation with the past, Tamiko Nimura explores her late father’s life and her family’s wartime history at Tule Lake. The typewritten pages of her father’s unpublished memoir—written decades earlier about his childhood behind barbed wire—spark a reckoning with the long shadow of parental loss and the unresolved legacy of incarceration.
Following an innovative structure, Nimura interlaces her father’s vivid recollections with her own: scenes of camp life, family separation, and resistance alongside her present-day journey as a mother, writer, and descendant. Joining a community pilgrimage to Tule Lake transforms inherited pain into collective remembrance.
With honesty and lyrical precision, Nimura shows how intergenerational trauma and silence are transmitted, and how confronting them can foster healing. Part memoir, part dialogue with the past, A Place for What We Lose illuminates the enduring costs of incarceration while honoring the persistence of family, memory, and story. It is a profoundly moving exploration of grief, history, and the fragile but necessary work of resilience.

About the Speakers:

Tamiko Nimura (Sansei/Pinay) is a creative nonfiction writer living in Tacoma, Washington. Her poems, essays, and interviews have appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, The Rumpus, HYPHEN, and elsewhere. She is coauthor of the graphic novel We Hereby Refuse: Japanese American Resistance to Wartime Incarceration, which was a finalist for a Washington State Book Award in 2022.

Caitlin Oiye Coon is a Yonsei who was born and raised in Seattle. Her interest in the incarceration stems from her paternal family’s experiences at Tule Lake incarceration camp. She currently serves as the Archives Director at Densho, where she oversees a team dedicated to the preservation and access of historical materials and oral histories through digital technologies. She’s developed and currently manages the organization’s digitization program, helped establish archival best practices, and created training curriculum for partner organizations. She has over 15 years of experience as an archivist, with a specific interest in community-based archives and the impact of technology in the archival profession.

Shawn Wong is the author of the award-winning novel, "Homebase" and the novel, "American Knees," a romantic comedy that was made into an award-winning feature film. He is also the co-editor and editor of six Asian American and American multicultural literary anthologies including the pioneering anthology "Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Asian American Writers." He is currently the Byron and Alice Lockwood Professor in the Humanities and Professor of English at the University of Washington.

This event is presented in partnership with mam's books, Densho, and University of Washington Press.

Thank you to The Seattle Public Library Foundation, The Gary and Connie Kunis Foundation, and The Seattle Times for their generous support of library programs.

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