Circle K Cycles - by Karen Tei Yamashita (Paperback)

About the Book

With skill, imagination, and wit, Yamashita defines an emerging challenge of twenty-first century global society.

Book Synopsis

"Yamashita is so tuned into now, she can see tomorrow."--Booklist on Tropic of Orange, starred review

"Through the Arc of the Rainforest progresses toward an apocalyptic resolution that spreads out like a Bosch triptych reproduced by Gauguin. In this, her first novel, Ms. Yamashita presents a critique of human waste and stupidity that is fluid and poetic as well as terrifying."--The New York Times Book Review

Yamashita's innovative melding of fiction and essay explores issues such as labor, nationalism, and cultural diaspora. When the grandchildren of Japanese immigrants to Brazil move to Japan to assume the manual work native Japanese people no longer want, their need for cultural belonging, their homesickness for details of their birthplace, clash with the status quo. This book of hybrids--merging collage with text, story with history--opens a door onto one of the important issues of the new century.

Yamashita has a powerful story to tell about a community that is globally extensive and the freedom--physical and emotional--implied by that new geography.

Karen Tei Yamashita is a winner of the American Book Award and the Janet Heidinger Kafka Award. She is an assistant professor of Literature and Creative Writing at the University of California in Santa Cruz.

Review Quotes

"Beautiful. . . . a totally fascinating and engaging representation of cultural diaspora and hybrid identities." --Giant Robot

"Marvelous . . . the trilingual narrative, personal recollections, reflections, and stories cumulatively convey the complexities of the modern diasporic world." --Pan-Japan

"Visually arresting . . . Circle K Cycles's brilliant fusing of forms is perfectly suited to its subject matter." --Review of Contemporary Fiction

"Thoughtful . . . a complex globalized twenty-first-century stew of laboring class migrations, cultural diffusions, and loosening national identities." --Multicultural Review

"This book of hybrids opens a door onto one of the important issues of the new century and illustrates a global society that resists heritage by hyphenation." --Rafu Shimpo

"At once [a] short story collection, memoir and scrapbook--charmingly enlivened with snapshots, advertisements, signs, random factoids and graphics. . . . [Yamashita] brings it all together with humor and heart." -- Publishers Weekly

About the Author

Karen Tei Yamashita is the author of Through the Arc of the Rain Forest, Brazil-Maru, Tropic of Orange, I Hotel, and Anime Wong, all published by Coffee House Press. I Hotel was selected as a finalist for the National Book Award and awarded the California Book Award, the American Book Award, the Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association Award, and the Association for Asian American Studies Book Award. She has been a US Artists Ford Foundation Fellow and is currently Professor of Literature and Creative Writing and the co-holder of the University of California Presidential Chair for Feminist & Critical Race & Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz.