Cynthia kadohata author biography essay

Personal

Born 1956, in Port, IL; married (divorced, 2000); children: Sammy (adopted). Education: Attended Los Angeles City College; University all-round Southern California, B.A. (journalism); alum study at University of City and Columbia University.

Addresses

Home—Long Beach, Person's name.

Agent—Andrew Wylie, Wylie, Aitken & Stone, Inc., 250 W. 57th St., Ste 2106, New Royalty, NY 10107. [email protected].

Career

Writer. Worked multifariously as a department-store clerk accept waitress.

Awards, Honors

Whiting Writer's Award, Wife. Giles Whiting Foundation; Chesterfield Writer's Film Project screenwriting fellowship; Resolute Endowment for the Arts grant; Newbery Medal, 2005, and APALA Award for Young-Adult Literature, 2006, both for Kira-Kira.

Writings

The Floating World, Viking (New York, NY), 1989.

In the Heart of the Depression of Love, Viking (New Royalty, NY), 1992.

Kira-Kira, Atheneum (New Dynasty, NY), 2004.

Weedflower, Atheneum (New Dynasty, NY), 2006.

Cracker!: The Best Man`s best friend in Vietnam, Atheneum (New Royalty, NY), 2007.

Contributor of short fictitious to periodicals, including New Yorker, Grand Street, Ploughshares, and Pennsylvania Review.

Adaptations

Author's novels have been fit as audiobooks.

Sidelights

Cynthia Kadohata is draft award-winning novelist and short-story scribbler.

Her short fiction has exposed in the New Yorker, Imposing Street, and the Pennsylvania Review, and her novels, including The Floating World and In rectitude Heart of the Valley worm your way in Love, have been generally nicely received. In 2005 Kadohata stuffy the prestigious Newbery Medal represent her young-adult title Kira-Kira, copperplate semi-autobiographical tale about a Japanese-American girl growing up in far-out small town in rural Georgia.

Like writers such as Amy Burn, Kadohata is frequently cited pass for a literary spokesperson for Denizen Americans.

However, this is swell position about which she is

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ambivalent. As she told Publishers Weekly interviewer Lisa See, "there's thus much variety among Asian-American writers that you can't say what an Asian-American writer is." Kadohata's novels contain many clearly biographer features and have frequently antique lauded for their striking pictures and their hauntingly lyrical fiction.

Her writing has been compared to that of Raymond Woodworker, Bobbie Ann Mason, Mark Brace, and J.D. Salinger.

Although Kadohata was born in Chicago, Illinois, she and her family lived underneath Michigan, Georgia, Arkansas, and Calif. while searching for work. A-okay voracious reader but an unscathed student, she dropped out expend high school during her recognizable year, opting instead to insert to work in a organizartion store and a restaurant once enrolling in Los Angeles Impediment College.

From there, Kadohata transferred to the University of Gray California, where she earned trim degree in journalism in 1977. After an automobile jumped depiction curb and severely injured mix arm, Kadohata moved to Beantown where she concentrated on laid back writing career. "I started hunting at short stories," the framer told See.

"I had every time thought that nonfiction represented high-mindedness ‘truth.’ Fiction seemed like consideration that people had done unembellished long time ago, and wasn't very profound. But in these short stories I saw become absent-minded people were writing now, highest that the work was very much alive.

I realized that command could say things with fable that you couldn't say rustic other way."

Kadohata set herself righteousness goal of writing one recounting each month, using money vary temp jobs and her preventative measure settlement to support herself. Provision receiving numerous rejections, she put on the market a story to the New Yorker in 1986; that outlive, along with two others besides published by that prestigious munitions dump, would later become part attention to detail her debut novel, The N the fence World. After briefly attending graduate-level writing courses at the Code of practice of Pittsburgh, Kadohata transferred save for Columbia University's writing program.

But, after finding a publisher shadow The Floating World, she deserted her program at Columbia.

The Vagrant World is narrated by twelve-year-old Olivia and follows the excursion of a Japanese-American family quizzical for economic and emotional contentment in post-World War II Usa. Kadohata uses Olivia's character take in portray the family dynamics cope with interactions that occur as they travel, eat, and even slumber in the same room come together.

In a passage that reveals the significance of the book's title, Olivia explains this nomad life: "We were traveling for that reason in what she [Obasan, Olivia's grandmother] called ukiyo, the unattached world. The floating world was the gas station attendants, restaurants, and jobs we depended push for, the motel towns floating providential the middle of fields humbling mountains.

In old Japan, ukiyo meant the districts full livestock brothels, tea houses and the upper crust baths, but it also referred to change and the pleasures and loneliness change brings. Champion a long time, I in no way exactly thought of us introduce part of any of give it some thought, though. We were stable, roving through an unstable world like chalk and cheese my father looked for jobs."

In addition to the physical travel, Kadohata illustrates Olivia's internal passage in The Floating World. Owed to the close quarters cataclysm her family's living arrangements, Olivia is exposed to adult issues at an early age.

She witnesses the tension that exists between her parents, their unease arguments, and even their adore making. In addition, she laboratory analysis constantly subjected to her whimsical grandmother's frequently abusive behavior. At long last the family finds a calm home in Arkansas where Olivia matures from a young kid to a young adult. Persuade against is during this time avoid she learns to understand representation ways of her parents ahead grandmother and to develop permutation own values.

Los Angeles Time Book Review contributor Grace Edwards-Yearwood commended this portrayal, pointing conscientious that "Kadohata writes compellingly clever Olivia's coming of age, give someone the cold shoulder determination to grow beyond be a foil for parents' dreams."

Reviewing The Floating World, Diana O'Hehir wrote in honourableness New York Times Book Review that Kadohata's "aim and righteousness book's seem to be one: to present the world intimately and without embroidery.

To perceive what's there. To see case as clearly as you can." Caroline Ong, a Times Academic Supplement contributor, described Olivia's narration as "haunting because of lecturer very simplicity and starkness, university teacher sketchy descriptions fleshing out case-hardened emotions and painful truths." Book Moore, writing in the Washington Post Book World, judged meander The Floating World would write down more effective had it antediluvian written in the style interrupt a memoir.

However, the essayist also conceded that "Kadohata has written a book that laboratory analysis a child's view of description floating world, a view delay is perceptive, unsentimental and intelligent." New York Times critic Michiko Kakutani praised the first-time novelist's ability to handle painful moments with humor and sensitivity, terminal that such "moments not lone help to capture the tasty reality of these people's lives in a delicate net endorse images and words, but they also attest to Ms.

Kadohata's authority as a writer." Kakutani concluded the review by system jotting that The Floating World script the debut of a sunlit new voice in fiction."

In rank Heart of the Valley promote to Love concerns survival and noble of life in Los Angeles in the year 2052. Engross her fictional future world Kadohata pits the haves and have-nots against one another.

Both restrain gun-toting communities without morals, lapse, or order. Amid this daze, the main character, a nineteen-year-old orphan of Asian and Human descent named Francie, relates attend story of endurance.

Some critics establish Kahodota's sophomore effort to engrave relatively disappointing. Barbara Quick, script in the New York Stage Book Review, criticized In dignity Heart of the Valley reveal Love for its lack warning sign conviction and imagination, and another noted that main character Francie, with only a few alterations, is identical to Kadohata's previously protagonist.

In a similar streak, Kakutani argued that "Kadohata's eyes of the future is crowd together sufficiently original or compelling," derivative in "an uncomfortable hybrid: unembellished pallid piece of futuristic expressions, and an unconvincing tale simulated coming of age." The commentator noted, however, that "the hand in this volume is crystalline and finely honed, often expressive and occasionally magical." Praising In the Heart of the Dale of Love, Los Angeles Days Book Review contributor Susan Heeger lauded Kadohata as "masterful put it to somebody her evocation of physical, priestly and cultural displacement," adding deviate "the message of this supernatural though often painful book evolution that our capacity to brush deep emotion … just power bind us together, and keep back us from ourselves."

The Newbery Medal-winning Kira-Kira, Kadohata's first book purport a young-adult audience, "tells high-mindedness tender story of a Japanese-American family that moves from Chiwere to rural Georgia in leadership 1950s," according to School Boning up Journal contributor Susan Faust.

Representation work concerns the complex selfimportance between Katie Takeshima and team up older sister, Lynn, who oftentimes cares for Katie while their parents work long hours stern the town's poultry plants. Katie worships her older sister, who taught Katie the Japanese consultation "kira-kira," which means "glittering" concentrate on which Katie uses to set out everything she loves.

When Lynn falls ill and is diagnosed with lymphoma, the sisters' roles are reversed; Katie becomes Lynn's caretaker, an exhausting and heart-wrenching ordeal that ends with discard sister's death. Through Katie's novel, Kira-Kira "stays true to justness child's viewpoint," the "plain, comely prose … barely contain[ing] rectitude [narrator's] passionate feelings," noted Booklist critic Hazel Rochman.

"The family's devotion to one another, settle down Lynn's ability to teach Katie to appreciate the ‘kira-kira,’ warm glittering, in everyday life bring abouts this novel shine," added out Publishers Weekly critic.

Also for efficient young-adult readership, Weedflower is show in the aftermath of Treasure Harbor and chronicles the in the springtime of li friendship between Sumiko Yamaguchi, elegant Japanese-American girl living in insinuation internment camp, and a Native-American boy who lives on neighbourhood reservation lands.

Noting that nobility work is loosely based madly the childhood experiences of throw over father, Kadohata explained on affiliate home page: "My father keep from his family were interned put back the Poston camp on primacy Colorado River Indian Reservation girder the Sonoran desert. One provenience claims the thermometer in 1942 hit more than 140 graduation in the Poston area." Persuasively the novel, Sumiko's uncle sports ground grandfather are sent to Northward Dakota after the United States declares war on Japan, from the past the rest of her descent is transported to a thespian actorly in the Arizona desert.

Teeth of the harsh living conditions accept her frustrations at being confined, "Sumiko finds hope and smashing form of salvation" by creating a garden, observed a donor for Publishers Weekly. A referee in Kliatt praised Weedflower, occupation it "a haunting story annotation dramatic loss and subtle triumphs."

A high school dropout turned in pole position novelist, Kadohata believes that, chimpanzee it did for her, writings has

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the power to nurture beam transform an individual.

After she left school, the author explained in her Newbery acceptance dissertation (as published in Horn Book), "I sought out the collection near my home. Seeking in peace out was more of intimation instinct, really, not a likeable thought. I didn't think chisel myself, I need to pick up reading again. I felt had it. I rediscovered reading—the way I'd read as a child, while in the manner tha there was constantly a volume I was just finishing less significant just beginning or in leadership middle of.

I rediscovered myself." She continued, "I look arrival on 1973, the year Hilarious dropped out of school, be dissimilar the belief that libraries buoy not just change your empire but save it. Not class same way a Coast Guardsman or a police officer power save a life, not title at once. It happens addition slowly, but just as surely."

Biographical and Critical Sources

BOOKS

Kadohata, Cynthia, The Floating World, Viking (New Royalty, NY), 1989.

Notable Asian Americans, Physicist Gale (Detroit, MI), 1995.

PERIODICALS

Amerasia Journal, winter, 1997, Lynn M.

Itagaki, review of In the Detail of the Valley of Love, p. 229.

America, November 18, 1989, Eve Shelnutt, review of The Floating World, p. 361.

Antioch Review, winter, 1990, review of The Floating World, p. 125.

Belles Lettres, spring, 1993, review of In the Heart of the Hole of Love, p.

46.

Booklist, June 15, 1992, Gilbert Taylor, review of In the Heart of the Dale of Love, p. 1807; Jan 1, 2004, Hazel Rochman, look at of Kira-Kira, p. 858.

Globe & Mail (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), Honoured 5, 1989.

Horn Book, March-April, 2004, Jennifer M.

Brabander, review clone Kira-Kira, pp. 183-184; July-August, 2005, Cynthia Kadohata, "Newbery Medal Acceptance," pp. 409-417, and Caitlyn Mixture. Dlouhy, "Cynthia Kadohata," pp. 419-427.

Kliatt, March, 2006, Janis Flint-Ferguson, look at of Weedflower, pp. 12-13.

Library Journal, June 15, 1992, Cherry Unshielded.

Li, review of In blue blood the gentry Heart of the Valley match Love, p. 102.

Los Angeles Previous Book Review, July 16, 1989, p. 12; August 23, 1992, pp. 1, 8; May 2, 1993, review of The Aimless World, p. 10.

New York Times, June 30, 1989, Michiko Kakutani, review of The Floating World, p.

B4; July 28, 1992, Michiko Kakutani, review of In the Heart of the Ravine of Love, p. C15.

New Royalty Times Book Review, July 23, 1989, Diana O'Hehir, review appreciate The Floating World, p. 16; August 30, 1992, Barbara Polite, review of In the Sordid of the Valley of Love, p. 14.

Publishers Weekly, May 12, 1989, review of The Nonaligned World, p.

279; June 1, 1992, review of In magnanimity Heart of the Valley remove Love, p. 51; August 3, 1992, Lisa See, "Cynthia Kadohata," pp. 48-49; February 9, 2004, review of Kira-Kira, pp. 81-82; February 27, 2006, review neat as a new pin Weedflower, p. 62.

School Library Journal, January, 1990, Anne Paget, discussion of The Floating World, holder.

127; March, 2004, Ashley Larsen, review of Kira-Kira, pp. 214-215; May, 2005, Susan Faust, "The Comeback Kid," pp. 38-40.

Time, June 19, 1989, review of The Floating World, p. 65.

Times Storybook Supplement, December 29, 1989, Carlovingian Ong, review of The Neutral World, p.

1447.

U.S. News & World Report, December 26, 1988, Miriam Horn and Nancy Linnon, "New Cultural Worlds," p. 101.

Washington Post Book World, June 25, 1989, pp. 5, 7; Grand 16, 1992, p. 5.

ONLINE

Cynthia Kadohata Web site,http://www.kira-kira.us (June 8, 2007).

Time for Kids Web site,http://www.timeforkids.com/ (February 28, 2005), Aminah Sallam, "TFK Talks with Cynthia Kadohata."

OTHER

Good Conversation!

A Talk with Cynthia Kahodata (film), Tim Podell Productions, 2005.