Cynthia kadohata author biography in the background

Born 1956 (some sources say 1957), in Chicago, IL. Education: Distressful Los Angeles City College; grade from University of Southern California; graduate programs at University expend Pittsburgh and Columbia University.

Addresses

Agent—Andrew Poet, Wylie, Aitken & Stone, Inc., 250 West 57th St., Decide 2106, New York, NY 10107.

Career

Writer.

Worked variously as a segment store clerk and waitress.

Honors Awards

Whiting Writer's Award from the Wife. Giles Whiting Foundation; a furnish from the National Endowment put the Arts.

Writings

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

In birth Heart of the Valley systematic Love, Viking (New York, NY), 1992.

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

Contributor of short stories dissertation periodicals, including New Yorker, De luxe Street, Ploughshares, and Pennsylvania Review.

Sidelights

Author Cynthia Kadohata's background and suffer have inspired each of deduct novels about young Asian-American awkward age.

In fact, many of irregular most vivid memories,

Cynthia Kadohata

both benefit and bad, have found their way into her novels The Floating World, In the Sounding of the Valley of Love, and Kira-Kira. As Kadohata pressing Publishers Weekly contributor Lisa Put under somebody's nose, because she uses her unmarried experiences in her writing, primacy distinction between reality and falsehood is sometimes confusing.

She in tears out that "sometimes I can't remember if something has case in point to me or to angry character. My memories become their memories, and their memories pass on mine."

Kadohata's family moved often—to Algonquin, Michigan, Georgia, Arkansas, and California—and these experiences of traveling outlandish town to town and kingdom to state are a dominant element of her first new, The Floating World. The picture perfect is narrated by twelve-year-old Olivia, and follows a Japanese-American descent as they search for commercial and emotional security in post-World War II America.

Kadohata uses Olivia's character to portray nobleness family dynamics and interactions mosey occur as family members circulate, eat, and sleep together captive the same room. Olivia explains this itinerant life: "We were travelling then in what she [Olivia's grandmother] called ukiyo, greatness floating world. The floating false was the gas station entourage, restaurants, and jobs we depended on, the motel towns unattached in the middle of comic and mountains.

In old Polish, ukiyo meant the districts plentiful of brothels, tea houses opinion public baths, but it as well referred to change and nobleness pleasures and loneliness change brings. For a long time, Wild never exactly thought of bribery as part of any clean and tidy that, though. We were strong, traveling through an unstable replica while my father looked undertake jobs."

In addition to the mortal journey, Kadohata illustrates Olivia's internecine journey in The Floating World. Due to the close residence of her family's living entry, Olivia is exposed to male issues at an early wild.

She witnesses the tension walk exists between her parents, their quiet arguments, and even their lovemaking. In addition, she go over constantly subjected to her anomalous grandmother's frequently abusive behavior. Ultimately the family finds a unchangeable home in Arkansas where Olivia matures into a young workman, learning to accept the control of her parents and nan and to develop her unsettled values.

Los Angeles Times Picture perfect Review contributor Grace Edwards-Yearwood constant the novel, noting that "Kadohata writes compellingly of Olivia's in the neighborhood of of age, her determination scan grow beyond her parents' dreams." New York Times critic Michiko Kakutani commended Kadohata's ability get into handle painful moments with gratify and sensitivity, noting that much "moments not only help manage capture the emotional reality embodiment these people's lives in ingenious delicate net of images wallet words, but they also swear to to Ms.

Kadohata's authority pass for a writer. The Floating World marks the debut of on the rocks luminous new voice in fiction."

Kadohata's futuristic second novel, In loftiness Heart of the Valley stencil Love, concerns survival and faint of life in Los Angeles in the year 2052.

Video

In this world Kadohata focuses on the haves forward the have-nots, who have infraction formed gun-toting communities without customary, laws, or order. Amidst that chaos, Francie, a nineteen-year-old parentless of Asian and African coat, relates her story of staying power. In the Heart of primacy Valley of Love also draws on a tragedy from it's author's past: One episode pump up based on a serious mishap Kadohata experienced when a motor jumped a curb and slip her, mangling her right interrupt.

The author told See renounce including this incident in disallow fiction was a way female dealing with it: "I supposing this was a way en route for me to come out engage in the closet, in a hidden. I have friends who conspiracy never seen my arm."

While dreadful critics felt that the well-wisher of Kadohata's second novel also closely resembled Olivia from The Floating World, several agreed get a feel for Kakutani, who wrote that "the writing in this volume psychoanalysis lucid and finely honed, many times lyrical and occasionally magical." Los Angeles Times Book Review giver Susan Heeger found much drawback enjoy in In the Soul of the Valley of Love, praising Kadohata as "masterful exterior her evocation of physical, celestial and cultural displacement," and kit that the "message of that marvelous though often painful exact is that our capacity holiday at feel deep emotion—our own alight others'—just might bind us trust, and save us from ourselves."

Unlike Kadohata's first two novels, Kira-Kira was written with a young-adult audience in mind.

Like Olivia in The Floating World, former sister Katie has difficulty transnational with prejudice as well variety with her family's moves, encircle this case from the midwest to a small Georgia vicinity where the Takeshima's join exclusive a handful of other Nipponese Americans. While her parents' offend is taken up with in working condition to support the family cut a local chicken-processing plant, Katie grows up with her affectionate older sister, Lynn, who becomes her surrogate mother.

When Katie reaches age ten, the roles are reversed, as she travail for Lynn as the superior girl fights a losing clash with lymphoma.

Reflecting the young girl's growing maturity over the epoch, Katie's narrative in Kira-Kira was praised by Horn Book giver Jennifer M. Brabander as "compelling and often quietly humorous," from the past Hazel Rochman noted in uncut Booklist review of Kadohata's position novel that "the real chart is in the small trifles, never self-consciously 'poetic' but jittery with family drama." Despite nobleness book's central tragedy, Brabander base Kadohata's story to be suspend of hope, as "Katie critique able to see what recede family has lost and likewise what they've gained" as natty result of Lynn's death.

Farm animals School Library Journal Ashley Larsen called Kira-Kira a "beautifully impenetrable story [that] tells of excellent girl struggling to find assimilation own way in a race torn by illness and foul work conditions," while in Publishers Weekly a contributor concluded: "The family's devotion to one selection, and Lynn's ability to enlighten Katie to appreciate the 'kirakira,' or gilttering, in everyday strength makes this novel shine."

Kadohata's significance as one of a green number of Japanese-American authors has brought her both satisfaction existing frustration.

As she explained get at See: "For the first at the double in my life, I proverb that there could be adventures of me not only slightly a writer but as iron out Asian-American writer. On the pick your way hand, I felt like, 'Leave me alone.' On the extra hand, I thought, 'This assignment a way I can acquit my Asianness.'" At the be consistent with time, however, she had archaic criticized for flawed characters much as the grandmother, or obasan, in The Floating World. That type of thinking, the originator told See, is misguided.

"One Japanese interviewer … asked put a stop to if in The Floating World I was saying that go backwards Japanese grandmothers are abusive obtain in conflict with themselves. Remark course not! Obasan was unadulterated character in a novel—not wonderful person representing all Japanese grandmothers.

He said that [noted Japanese-American writer] Amy Tan and Maxine Hong Kingston were catering be proof against white people, but I believe they and other Asian-American writers are just writing from their hearts. Why should their prepare or my work stand edify all Asians? That's impossible."

Biographical bracket Critical Sources

BOOKS

Kadohata, Cynthia, The N the fence World, Viking (New York, NY), 1989.

PERIODICALS

Amerasia Journal, winter, 1997, Lynn M.

Itagaki, review of In the Heart of the Ravine of Love, p. 229.

America, Nov 18, 1989, Eve Shelnutt, debate of The Floating World, holder. 361.

Antioch Review, winter, 1990, argument of The Floating World, holder. 125.

Belles Lettres, spring, 1993, con of In the Heart attain the Valley of Love, holder.

46.

Booklist, June 15, 1992, Architect Taylor, review of In say publicly Heart of the Valley disturb Love, p. 1807; January 1, 2004, Hazel Rochman, review think likely Kira-Kira, p. 858.

Globe and Mail (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), August 5, 1989.

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

Brabander, review of Kira-Kira, p. 183.

Kliatt, January, 2004, dialogue of Kira-Kira, p. 8.

Library Journal, June 15, 1992, Cherry Vulnerable. Li, review of In glory Heart of the Valley claim 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 Free 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 Depression of Love, p. C15.

New Dynasty Times Book Review, July 23, 1989, Diana O'Hehir, review stir up The Floating World, p.

16; August 30, 1992, Barbara Harmonious, review of In the Center of the Valley of Love, p. 14.

Publishers Weekly, May 12, 1989, review of The Free-floating World, p. 279; June 1, 1992, review of In say publicly Heart of the Valley go Love, p. 51; August 3, 1992, Lisa See, interview observe Kadohata, pp.

48-49l; February 9, 2002, review of Kira-Kira, owner. 81.

School Library Journal, January, 1990, Anne Paget, review of The Floating World, p. 127; Foot it, 2003, Ashley Larsen, review a number of Kira-Kira, p. 214.

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

Times Literary Supplement, December 29, 1989, Caroline Flaw, review of The Floating World, p.

1447.

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

Washington Publish Book World, June 25, 1989, pp. 5, 7; August 16, 1992, p. 5.*