Secret Harvests - by David Mas Masumoto (Hardcover)

About the Book

A family separated by racism against Japanese Americans and the discrimination of people with developmental disabilities--reunited seventy years later, returning to their roots on a farm and bound by family secrets.

Book Synopsis

I discover a "lost" aunt, separated from our family due to racism and discrimination against the disabled. She had a mental disability due to childhood meningitis. She was taken away in 1942 when all Japanese Americans were considered the enemy and imprisoned. She then became a "ward" of the state. We believed she had died, but 70 years later found her alive and living a few miles from our family farm. How did she survive? Why was she kept hidden? How did both shame and resilience empower my family to forge forward in a land that did not want them? I am haunted and driven to explore my identity and the meaning of family--especially as farmers tied to the land. I uncover family secrets that bind us to a sense of history buried in the earth that we work and a sense of place that defines us.

Review Quotes

"A simultaneously elegant and sharp-edged exploration of the hidden past."
--Kirkus Reviews (starred)

"Masumoto has shared his experiences as an organic farmer in central California in books and as a columnist for the Sacramento Bee. Here, he details his family's remarkable discovery in 2012 of an aunt--his mother's sister Shizuko (Sugi)--whose childhood case of meningitis rendered her mentally disabled, and who was thus forcibly separated from her siblings and parents during the internment of Japanese Americans in WWII...Masumoto thoughtfully ruminates on the swirl of emotions the war wrought on his family... and their shame in realizing that institutionalized care for Sugi might have been better than what they could have given her. Ultimately, there is pride in Sugi's resilience..."
--Booklist

"Paired with artist Patricia Wakida's haunting illustrations, the book's rich, lyrical language evokes both cultural eloquence and California's seasonal beauty. Poignant and reflective, Secret Harvests is a family saga of quiet endurance and bittersweet triumphs."
--Meg Nola, Foreword Reviews

"Ultimately, the reader comes away from Secret Harvests with a sense of reverence for farmers and caregivers as well as an understanding of Masumoto's family history, which is representative of so many Japanese-American families' experiences in the last three generations. Reading this book will make you reconsider the value of difference, whether you are considering people or produce at the farmer's market."
--Rachel Lutwick-Deaner, Southern Review of Books

"Mas is truly a poet-farmer--he writes stories like he tends to his peaches, each memory cared for and brought to life in such beautiful, thoughtful detail. This book is an immigrant story both very personal to Mas and resonant with so many others around the world, inspiring and heartbreaking, a story of family, history, memory, and lifetimes of resilience."
--José Andrés, chef-activist and founder of World Central Kitchen

"Secrets carry the heavy weight of shame but they are also waiting to be liberated. Secret Harvests by David "Mas" Masumoto sheds light on an important chapter in Japanese American disability history by unearthing his intergenerational family story. Society can try to bury the ugliness of certain truths but they have a way of reaching toward the light."
--Alice Wong, disability rights activist, writer and founder of Disability Visibility Project

"Exquisite and haunting. Masumoto investigates the life of a long-lost aunt and, in the process, unearths a painful chapter from his own family's history. Secret Harvests is a deeply affecting meditation on loss and resilience and what we owe to those we have forgotten. A heartbreaking memoir, written with clarity and grace, about how even the 'least' of us leaves behind an indelible mark on the world."
--Julie Otsuka, writer and author of The Buddha in the Attic

"Mas Masumoto masterfully weaves dramatic history with domestic tragedy into a coherent, revealing whole. This 'secret' merits serious pursuit."
--Lawson Fusao Inada, Guggenheim Fellow and author of Legends from Camp

About the Author

David Mas Masumoto is an organic farmer, author, and activist. His book Epitaph for a Peach won the Julia Child Cookbook award and was a finalist for a James Beard award. His writing has been awarded a Commonwealth Club of California silver medal and the Independent Publisher Books bronze medal. He has been honored by Rodale Institute as an "Organic Pioneer." He has served on the boards of the James Irvine Foundation, Public Policy Institute of California, Cal Humanities, and the National Council on the Arts with nomination by President Obama. He farms with his wife Marcy and two adult children, Nikiko and Koro. They reside in a hundred-year-old farmhouse surrounded by their eighty-acre organic peach, nectarine, apricot, and raisin farm outside of Fresno, California.