Multicultural Review, Vol. 1, No. 1, Spring, 1992 The Loom and Other Stories, a first collection by R. A. Sasaki, explores the lives of three generations of Japanese-Americans. Loosely connected, the nine stories that comprise the collection involve themes of loss, cultural identity, generational differences, and mother-daughter tensions. Throughout Sasaki’s work, much of the narrative […]
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Author: Ruth Sasaki
R. A. Sasaki is the author of The Loom and Other Stories (Graywolf Press, 1991). She is a third-generation San Franciscan (although she now lives in the East Bay).
“Threads from the Immigrant’s Loom”
San Francisco Chronicle, February 16, 1992. Reviewed by Peter Handel. Add Ruth Sasaki to the growing list of talented and prolific Bay Area Asian American authors. The nine short stories collected in “The Loom and Other Stories” focus primarily on Japanese American families. They range from wryly humorous to deeply touching, as Sasaki explores the […]
“Loom weaves stories about Japanese-Amer
“Loom weaves stories about Japanese-American Experience”, Patricia Abe, Oakland Tribune, December 8, 1991 The Loom and Other Stories, the first book by Berkeley writer R. A. Sasaki, shines with wit, insight and compassion. In a voice at once droll and straightforward, Sasaki brings to her fiction the specifics and peculiarities of the Japanese American experience, […]
New York Times Book Review
New York Times Book Review, December 8, 1991 In “Another Writer’s Beginnings,” the first story in this slender collection by R. A. Sasaki, the Japanese-American narrator recalls how as a child she had entertained the vain hope of becoming a Mouseketeer. She attributes this sense of possibility to sheer obliviousness. But vigilance rather than obliviousness […]
Newsday
Newsday, November 10, 1991 Although the nine separate stories comprise R. A. Sasaki’s first collection of fiction, taken together they create a single portrait of three generations of Japanese-Americans in the years before and after World War II. The first of these stories are among the last chronologically: the family is on its way to […]
Publishers Weekly
Publishers Weekly, September 6, 1991 The title story of this slender debut collection serves as a metaphor for the whole. Nine loosely connected tales weave the experiences of three generations of Japanese-Americans in San Francisco into a subtle, appealing tapestry. The stories explore emotional landmarks, beginning with the death of Jo Terasaki’s sister Cathy in […]
Really leaving now
Tsukuba Monogatari: 34th post Inevitably, my time in Tsukuba is coming to an end. After one false alarm, my Japanese friends seemed to sense that this was the real thing. Unable to get everyone together on the same date, they came up with a crafty solution―have two parties on different nights! Koizumi-san attended Part 2. […]
Orientation
Tsukuba Monogatari: 33rd post Randy came in to Tokyo with me to open up his bank account, as the bank our company uses does not have a branch in Tsukuba. We drove in one car to Arakawaoki Station, and I showed him where The Company parking lot was. Jennifer left later, and drove her car […]
Thirst
Tsukuba Monogatari: 32nd post I have always admired the subtlety with which Japanese people express feelings; however, when one spends an extended period of time in Japan, one begins to miss overt, extravagant―praise, for example. Especially at The Company, one begins to thirst for any sign of human feeling, any drop of what might possibly […]
Welcome to The Company
Tsukuba Monogatari: 31st post After spending the past few days devising the ideal, perfectly coordinated training schedule, Randy was hit by the reality of being at The Company when, within an hour of finally issuing the memo announcing the new quarter’s class schedule to his trainees, he received phone calls from six trainees―in Japanese―saying the […]