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The Unsung Great

Stories of Extraordinary Japanese Americans

By Greg Robinson

From a title-winning boxer in Louisiana to a Broadway baritone in New York, Japanese Americans have long belied their popular representation as “quiet Americans.” Showcasing the lives and achievements of relatively unknown but remarkable people...

Nisei Radicals

The Feminist Poetics and Transformative Ministry of Mitsuye Yamada and Michael Yasutake

By Diane C. Fujino

Demanding liberation, advocating for the oppressed, and organizing for justice, siblings Mitsuye Yamada (1923–) and Michael Yasutake (1920–2001) rebelled against respectability and assimilation, charting their own paths for what it means to be Nisei. Raised...

The Port of Missing Men

Billy Gohl, Labor, and Brutal Times in the Pacific Northwest

By Aaron Goings

In the early twentieth century so many dead bodies surfaced in the rivers around Aberdeen, Washington, that they were nicknamed the “floater fleet.” When Billy Gohl (1873–1927), a powerful union official, was arrested for murder,...

Gandhi’s Search for the Perfect Diet

Eating with the World in Mind

By Nico Slate

Mahatma Gandhi redefined nutrition as fundamental to building a more just world. What he chose to eat was intimately tied to his beliefs, and his key values of nonviolence, religious tolerance, and rural sustainability developed...

My Unforgotten Seattle

By Ron Chew. Foreword by Carey Quan Gelernter

Third-generation Seattleite, historian, journalist, and museum visionary Ron Chew spent more than five decades fighting for Asian American and social justice causes in Seattle. In this deeply personal memoir, he documents the tight-knit community he...

China Gothic

The Bishop of Beijing and His Cathedral

By Anthony E. Clark. Foreword by Leland M. Roth

As China struggled to redefine itself at the turn of the twentieth century, nationalism, religion, and material culture intertwined in revealing ways. This phenomenon is evident in the twin biographies of North China’s leading Catholic...

Quiet Odyssey

A Pioneer Korean Woman in America

By Mary Paik Lee. Edited with an Introduction by Sucheng Chan. Foreword by David K. Yoo

Mary Paik Lee left her native country in 1905, traveling with her parents as a political refugee after Japan imposed control over Korea. Her father worked in the sugar plantations of Hawaii briefly before taking...

Fifth Chinese Daughter

By Jade Snow Wong. Introduction by Leslie Bow. Illustrated by Kathryn Uhl

Jade Snow Wong’s autobiography portrays her coming-of-age in San Francisco's Chinatown, offering a rich depiction of her immigrant family and her strict upbringing, as well as her rebellion against family and societal expectations for a...

Chinese Funerary Biographies

An Anthology of Remembered Lives

By Patricia Buckley Ebrey, Ping Yao, Cong Ellen Zhang

Tens of thousands of epitaphs, or funerary biographies, survive from imperial China. Engraved on stone and placed in a grave, they typically focus on the deceased’s biography and exemplary words and deeds, expressing the survivors’...

Gordon Bennett

Selected Writings

By Angela Goddard, Tim Riley Walsh

The first publication to survey the writing practice of the late Gordon Bennett (1955–2014), Gordon Bennett: Selected Writings gives vital insight into one of Australia’s important contemporary artists in his own words. Bringing together nearly...

The Gift of Knowledge / Ttnúwit Átawish Nch'inch'imamí

Reflections on Sahaptin Ways

By Virginia R. Beavert and Janne L. Underriner

The Gift of Knowledge / Ttnuwit Atawish Nch’inch’imamí is a treasure trove of material for those interested in Native American culture. Author Virginia Beavert grew up in a traditional, Indian-speaking household. Both her parents and...

Looking for Betty MacDonald

The Egg, the Plague, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, and I

By Paula Becker

Betty Bard MacDonald (1907–1958), the best-selling author of The Egg and I and the classic Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle children’s books, burst onto the literary scene shortly after the end of World War II. Readers embraced her...

The Propeller under the Bed

A Personal History of Homebuilt Aircraft

By Eileen A. Bjorkman

On July 25, 2010, Arnold Ebneter flew across the country in a plane he designed and built himself, setting an aviation world record for aircraft of its class. He was eighty-two at the time and...

The Deepest Roots

Finding Food and Community on a Pacific Northwest Island

By Kathleen Alcalá

As friends began “going back to the land” at the same time that a health issue emerged, Kathleen Alcalá set out to reexamine her relationship with food at the most local level. Remembering her parents,...

The Tao of Raven

An Alaska Native Memoir

By Ernestine Hayes

In her first book, Blonde Indian, Ernestine Hayes powerfully recounted the story of returning to Juneau and to her Tlingit home after many years of wandering. The Tao of Raven takes up the next and,...

John Okada

The Life and Rediscovered Work of the Author of No-No Boy

By Frank Abe, Greg Robinson, Floyd Cheung

No-No Boy, John Okada’s only published novel, centers on a Japanese American who refuses to fight for the country that incarcerated him and his people in World War II and, upon release from federal prison...

Impermanence

An Anthropologist of Thailand and Asia

By Charles F. Keyes

Over a long and productive career, Charles “Biff” Keyes carried out research, taught, and forged links between scholars and institutions in the United States, Thailand, Vietnam, and Laos. His work has focused on religious practice,...

Firebrand Feminism

The Radical Lives of Ti-Grace Atkinson, Kathie Sarachild, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, and Dana Densmore

By Breanne Fahs

Unapologetic, troublemaking, agitating, revolutionary, and hot-headed: radical feminism bravely transformed the history of politics, love, sexuality, and science. In Firebrand Feminism, Breanne Fahs brings together ten years of dialogue with four founders of the radical...

Enduring Conviction

Fred Korematsu and His Quest for Justice

By Lorraine K. Bannai

Fred Korematsu’s decision to resist F.D.R.’s Executive Order 9066, which provided authority for the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, was initially the case of a young man following his heart: he wanted...

Warnings against Myself

Meditations on a Life in Climbing

By David Stevenson

From his youthful second ascent of the north ridge of Mount Kennedy in the Yukon’s Saint Elias Range, an in-and-out on skis for which he had not entirely learned how to ski, to a recent...