THE GATE OF MEMORY
Poems by Descendants of Nikkei Wartime Incarceration
Edited by Brynn Saito and Brandon Shimoda
Haymarket Books (April 1, 2025)
Trade paper • ISBN-13: 9798888903711 •US $21.95 • 6 in x 9 in • 272 pgs.
ABOUT THE BOOK:
An anthology of poetry on Nikkei incarceration, written by descendants of the WWII prisons and camps
A tribute to the 150,000 people harmed by the United States and Canada during WWII, this anthology is the first of its kind. The poetry expresses a range of experiences and perspectives from the afterlife of this historical yet enduring injustice. With a foreword by acclaimed poet, activist, and concentration camp survivor, Mitsuye Yamada, and an introduction by the editors, poets Brynn Saito and Brandon Shimoda, The Gate of Memory explores intergenerational trauma as the contributors, all of whom are descendants of those who were incarcerated, sift through an intimate record of wartime incarceration.
Contributors to this anthology include poets of Japanese American, Japanese Canadian, Okinawan American, Okinawan Canadian, Japanese Hawaiian, Alaska Native, mixed race Nikkei, and Japanese descent. Their poems reimagine, reinhabit, and retell the story of incarceration while embodying its many legacies, through a diversity of modes and themes, creating a panoramic portrait of anti-Asian racism, assimilation, loyalty, resistance, and redemption. The anthology illuminates individual perspectives and reveals collective experience. It insists upon the imperative of poetry in the processes of solidarity and transgenerational healing.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS:
Brandon Shimoda is the author of nine books of poetry and prose, including Hydra Medusa (Nightboat Books, 2023), The Grave on the Wall (City Lights, 2019), which received the PEN Open Book Award, and Evening Oracle (Letter Machine Editions, 2015), which received the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America. His next book is on the afterlife of Japanese American incarceration, and is forthcoming from City Lights in 2024. His writing has been published in BOMB, Brick, Harper’s, The Nation, The New York Times, and Poetry, among other venues. Brynn Saito is the author of Under a Future Sky (2023), Power Made Us Swoon (2016) and The Palace of Contemplating Departure (2013), winner of the Benjamin Saltman Poetry Award and a finalist for the Northern California Book Award. She has received grant support from Densho, Hedgebrook, and the Santa Fe Art Institute. Her poems have appeared in The New York Times and American Poetry Review and she was a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize and the Milt Kessler Poetry Book Award. Brynn lives in the traditional homelands of the Yokuts and Mono peoples (also known as Fresno, CA), where she teaches in the MFA program at California State University, Fresno.
RIGHTS INFORMATION:
Please contact subagents for the following languages and territories:
| Language/Territory | Subagent |
|---|---|
| China, Taiwan, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Vietnam | Big Apple Agency |
| Dutch | Sebes & Bisseling Literary Agency |
| English outside North America | David Grossman Literary Agency |
| French | Deborah Druba Agency |
| German | Paul & Peter Fritz AG Literatur Agentur |
| Greek | Read n' Right Agency |
| Hebrew | The Deborah Harris Agency |
| Italian | Berla & Griffini Rights Agency |
| Japanese | The English Agency (Japan) Ltd |
| Korean | BC Agency, or Korea Copyright Center |
| Portuguese | RIFF Agency |
| Russia/Baltics/Eastern Europe | Prava I Prevodi |
| Scandinavia | Sebes & Bisseling Literary Agency |
| Spanish in Latin America | MB Agencia Literaria |
| Spanish in Spain | MB Agencia Literaria |
| Turkish | Anatolialit Agency |
For all other languages/territories, please contact Roam Agency.