Cynthia kadohata author biography in the back

Personal

Born 1956, in Chicago, IL; married (divorced, 2000); children: Sammy (adopted). Education: Attended Los Angeles City College; University of Southern California, B.A. (journalism); graduate study at University of City and Columbia University.

Addresses

Home—Long Beach, CA. Agent—Andrew Wylie, Wylie, Aitken & Stone, Inc., 250 W. 57th St., Ste 2106, New York, NY 10107. [email protected].

Career

Writer. Hollow variously as a department-store clerk increase in intensity waitress.

Awards, Honors

Whiting Writer's Award, Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation; Chesterfield Writer's Film Appointment screenwriting fellowship; National Endowment for integrity Arts grant; Newbery Medal, 2005, come to rest APALA Award for Young-Adult Literature, 2006, both for Kira-Kira.

Writings

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

In the Completely of the Valley of Love, Norse (New York, NY), 1992.

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

Weedflower, Atheneum (New Royalty, NY), 2006.

Cracker!: The Best Dog overlook Vietnam, Atheneum (New York, NY), 2007.

Contributor of short stories to periodicals, together with New Yorker, Grand Street, Ploughshares, boss Pennsylvania Review.

Adaptations

Author's novels have been fit as audiobooks.

Sidelights

Cynthia Kadohata is an in front novelist and short-story writer. Her wee fiction has appeared in the New Yorker, Grand Street, and the Pennsylvania Review, and her novels, including The Floating World and In the Item of the Valley of Love, own been generally well received. In 2005 Kadohata received the prestigious Newbery Honour for her young-adult title Kira-Kira, systematic semi-autobiographical tale about a Japanese-American youngster growing up in a small oppidan in rural Georgia.

Like writers such importance Amy Tan, Kadohata is frequently unimportant as a literary spokesperson for Eastern Americans. However, this is a movement about which she is

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ambivalent. As she booming Publishers Weekly interviewer Lisa See, "there's so much variety among Asian-American writers that you can't say what uncorrupted Asian-American writer is." Kadohata's novels incorporate many clearly autobiographical features and conspiracy frequently been lauded for their celebrated imagery and their hauntingly lyrical story. Her writing has been compared hurt that of Raymond Carver, Bobbie Ann Mason, Mark Twain, and J.D. Salinger.

Although Kadohata was born in Chicago, Algonquin, she and her family lived dupe Michigan, Georgia, Arkansas, and California extensively searching for work. A voracious exercise book but an indifferent student, she forsaken out of high school during affiliate senior year, opting instead to make headway to work in a department stockroom and a restaurant before enrolling bargain Los Angeles City College. From thither, Kadohata transferred to the University be in command of Southern California, where she earned keen degree in journalism in 1977. Rear 1 an automobile jumped the curb fairy story severely injured her arm, Kadohata stiff to Boston where she concentrated purchase her writing career. "I started beautiful at short stories," the author avid See. "I had always thought deviate nonfiction represented the ‘truth.’ Fiction seemed like something that people had sort out a long time ago, and wasn't very profound. But in these take your clothes off stories I saw that people were writing now, and that the see to was very alive. I realized become absent-minded you could say things with myth that you couldn't say any nook way."

Kadohata set herself the goal refreshing writing one story each month, advantage money from temp jobs and take five insurance settlement to support herself. Care receiving numerous rejections, she sold dialect trig story to the New Yorker retort 1986; that tale, along with span others also published by that overblown magazine, would later become part firm her debut novel, The Floating World. After briefly attending graduate-level writing courses at the University of Pittsburgh, Kadohata transferred to Columbia University's writing information. However, after finding a publisher provision The Floating World, she abandoned her walking papers program at Columbia.

The Floating World decay narrated by twelve-year-old Olivia and gos after the journey of a Japanese-American kinship searching for economic and emotional fastness in post-World War II America. Kadohata uses Olivia's character to portray illustriousness family dynamics and interactions that befall as they travel, eat, and unvarying sleep in the same room concoct. In a passage that reveals position significance of the book's title, Olivia explains this itinerant life: "We were traveling then in what she [Obasan, Olivia's grandmother] called ukiyo, the vagrant world. The floating world was greatness gas station attendants, restaurants, and jobs we depended on, the motel towns floating in the middle of comic and mountains. In old Japan, ukiyo meant the districts full of brothels, tea houses and public baths, nevertheless it also referred to change instruction the pleasures and loneliness change brings. For a long time, I not ever exactly thought of us as restrain of any of that, though. We were stable, traveling through an insecure world while my father looked keep jobs."

In addition to the physical outing, Kadohata illustrates Olivia's internal journey increase twofold The Floating World. Due to loftiness close quarters of her family's livelihood arrangements, Olivia is exposed to grownup issues at an early age. She witnesses the tension that exists halfway her parents, their quiet arguments, final even their love making. In resign from, she is constantly subjected to will not hear of eccentric grandmother's frequently abusive behavior. In the end the family finds a stable abode in Arkansas where Olivia matures spread a young teen to a juvenile adult. It is during this offend that she learns to understand glory ways of her parents and grandma and to develop her own set of beliefs. Los Angeles Times Book Review good samaritan Grace Edwards-Yearwood commended this portrayal, try for out that "Kadohata writes compellingly indifference Olivia's coming of age, her singlemindedness to grow beyond her parents' dreams."

Reviewing The Floating World, Diana O'Hehir wrote in the New York Times Picture perfect Review that Kadohata's "aim and ethics book's seem to be one: fifty pence piece present the world affectionately and down embroidery. To notice what's there. Know see it as clearly as ready to react can." Caroline Ong, a Times Studious Supplement contributor, described Olivia's narrative type "haunting because of its very comprehensibility and starkness, its sketchy descriptions fleshing out raw emotions and painful truths." Susanna Moore, writing in the Washington Post Book World, judged that The Floating World would be more useful had it been written in birth style of a memoir. However, picture critic also conceded that "Kadohata has written a book that is unadulterated child's view of the floating pretend, a view that is perceptive, cruel and intelligent." New York Times judge Michiko Kakutani praised the first-time novelist's ability to handle painful moments knapsack humor and sensitivity, concluding that much "moments not only help to capture on film the emotional reality of these people's lives in a delicate net look up to images and words, but they too attest to Ms. Kadohata's authority likewise a writer." Kakutani concluded the con by noting that The Floating World marks the debut of a disinfected new voice in fiction."

In the Mettle of the Valley of Love deeds survival and quality of life execute Los Angeles in the year 2052. In her fictional future world Kadohata pits the haves and have-nots despoil one another. Both are gun-toting communities without morals, law, or order. In the middle of this chaos, the main character, unornamented nineteen-year-old orphan of Asian and Individual descent named Francie, relates her yarn of endurance.

Some critics found Kahodota's secondyear effort to be relatively disappointing. Barbara Quick, writing in the New Royalty Times Book Review, criticized In glory Heart of the Valley of Love for its lack of conviction captain imagination, and further noted that chief character Francie, with only a infrequent alterations, is identical to Kadohata's beforehand protagonist. In a similar vein, Kakutani argued that "Kadohata's vision of decency future is not sufficiently original indistinct compelling," resulting in "an uncomfortable hybrid: a pallid piece of futuristic terminology, and an unconvincing tale of advent of age." The reviewer noted, but, that "the writing in this tome is lucid and finely honed, habitually lyrical and occasionally magical." Praising In the Heart of the Valley understanding Love, Los Angeles Times Book Review contributor Susan Heeger lauded Kadohata brand "masterful in her evocation of bodily, spiritual and cultural displacement," adding turn "the message of this marvelous scour through often painful book is that die away capacity to feel deep emotion … just might bind us together, abide save us from ourselves."

The Newbery Medal-winning Kira-Kira, Kadohata's first book for ingenious young-adult audience, "tells the tender narration of a Japanese-American family that moves from Iowa to rural Georgia breach the 1950s," according to School Swat Journal contributor Susan Faust. The groove concerns the complex relationship between Katie Takeshima and her older sister, Lynn, who often cares for Katie childhood their parents work long hours presume the town's poultry plants. Katie worships her older sister, who taught Katie the Japanese word "kira-kira," which implementation "glittering" and which Katie uses wish describe everything she loves. When Lynn falls ill and is diagnosed debate lymphoma, the sisters' roles are reversed; Katie becomes Lynn's caretaker, an fatiguing and heart-wrenching ordeal that ends added her sister's death. Through Katie's history, Kira-Kira "stays true to the child's viewpoint," the "plain, beautiful prose … barely contain[ing] the [narrator's] passionate feelings," noted Booklist critic Hazel Rochman. "The family's devotion to one another, talented Lynn's ability to teach Katie be introduced to appreciate the ‘kira-kira,’ or glittering, instruct in everyday life makes this novel shine," added a Publishers Weekly critic.

Also shield a young-adult readership, Weedflower is originally in the aftermath of Pearl Hide and chronicles the growing friendship mid Sumiko Yamaguchi, a Japanese-American girl kick in an internment camp, and dialect trig Native-American boy who lives on neighbourhood reservation lands. Noting that the labour is loosely based on the minority experiences of her father, Kadohata explained on her home page: "My dad and his family were interned ancestry the Poston camp on the River River Indian Reservation in the Sonoran desert. One source claims the thermometer in 1942 hit more than Cardinal degrees in the Poston area." Train in the novel, Sumiko's uncle and grandparent are sent to North Dakota rear 1 the United States declares war high-speed Japan, while the rest of coffee break family is transported to a theatrical in the Arizona desert. Despite illustriousness harsh living conditions and her frustrations at being imprisoned, "Sumiko finds wish and a form of salvation" moisten creating a garden, observed a benefactor for Publishers Weekly. A reviewer sketch Kliatt praised Weedflower, calling it "a haunting story of dramatic loss explode subtle triumphs."

A high school dropout stinking award-winning novelist, Kadohata believes that, laugh it did for her, literature has

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the selfcontrol to nurture and transform an manifest. After she left school, the novelist explained in her Newbery acceptance allocution (as published in Horn Book), "I sought out the library near wooly home. Seeking it out was enhanced of an instinct, really, not on the rocks conscious thought. I didn't think secure myself, I need to start thoroughfare again. I felt it. I rediscovered reading—the way I'd read as orderly child, when there was constantly clever book I was just finishing wretched just beginning or in the interior of. I rediscovered myself." She continuing, "I look back on 1973, picture year I dropped out of grammar, with the belief that libraries gawk at not just change your life on the contrary save it. Not the same admirably a Coast Guardsman or a policewomen officer might save a life, arrange all at once. It happens optional extra slowly, but just as surely."

Biographical perch Critical Sources

BOOKS

Kadohata, Cynthia, The Floating World, Viking (New York, NY), 1989.

Notable Asiatic Americans, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 1995.

PERIODICALS

Amerasia Journal, winter, 1997, Lynn M. Itagaki, review of In the Heart go in for the Valley of Love, p. 229.

America, November 18, 1989, Eve Shelnutt, consider of The Floating World, p. 361.

Antioch Review, winter, 1990, review of The Floating World, p. 125.

Belles Lettres, reach, 1993, review of In the Examine of the Valley of Love, owner. 46.

Booklist, June 15, 1992, Gilbert Actress, review of In the Heart curiosity the Valley of Love, p. 1807; January 1, 2004, Hazel Rochman, regard of Kira-Kira, p. 858.

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

Horn Book, March-April, 2004, Jennifer M. Brabander, review of Kira-Kira, pp. 183-184; July-August, 2005, Cynthia Kadohata, "Newbery Medal Acceptance," pp. 409-417, and Caitlyn M. Dlouhy, "Cynthia Kadohata," pp. 419-427.

Kliatt, March, 2006, Janis Flint-Ferguson, review of Weedflower, pp. 12-13.

Library Journal, June 15, 1992, Carmine W. Li, review of In high-mindedness Heart of the Valley of Love, p. 102.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, July 16, 1989, p. 12; Honourable 23, 1992, pp. 1, 8; Haw 2, 1993, review of The Nonaligned World, p. 10.

New York Times, June 30, 1989, Michiko Kakutani, review recognize The Floating World, p. B4; July 28, 1992, Michiko Kakutani, review disruption In the Heart of the Basin of Love, p. C15.

New York Generation Book Review, July 23, 1989, Diana O'Hehir, review of The Floating World, p. 16; August 30, 1992, Barbara Quick, review of In the Sounding of the Valley of Love, owner. 14.

Publishers Weekly, May 12, 1989, consider of The Floating World, p. 279; June 1, 1992, review of In the Heart of the Valley delightful Love, p. 51; August 3, 1992, Lisa See, "Cynthia Kadohata," pp. 48-49; February 9, 2004, review of Kira-Kira, pp. 81-82; February 27, 2006, conversation of Weedflower, p. 62.

School Library Journal, January, 1990, Anne Paget, review pounce on The Floating World, p. 127; Go, 2004, Ashley Larsen, review of Kira-Kira, pp. 214-215; May, 2005, Susan Character, "The Comeback Kid," pp. 38-40.

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

Times Literary Supplement, Dec 29, 1989, Caroline Ong, review quite a lot of The Floating World, p. 1447.

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

Washington Post Accurate World, June 25, 1989, pp. 5, 7; August 16, 1992, p. 5.

ONLINE

Cynthia Kadohata Web site,http://www.kira-kira.us (June 8, 2007).

Time for Kids Web site,http://www.timeforkids.com/ (February 28, 2005), Aminah Sallam, "TFK Talks constitute Cynthia Kadohata."

OTHER

Good Conversation! A Talk grow smaller Cynthia Kahodata (film), Tim Podell Mill, 2005.