This book is about my life, from my birth to the present. The format is essentially chronological covering my childhood years of the twenties, the Great Depression years of the thirties, the World War II years of the forties, and the postwar years to the present. However, it is not a straight narrative because it is a collection of vignettes that highlight certain events and moments of my life. These pieces were originally written at different points in my life, covering timely events or recollecting events of the past. So the chronology is sometimes blurred, the time jumping back and forth like flashbacks within a flashback. Through this "cinematic" method I hope to achieve a kind of impressionistic whole of my life story. Included also are poems which add a different perspective. Life wasn't always grim; there was some levity that leavened the days. - Hiroshi Kashiwagi
 Swimming in the American" was awarded the 2005 American Book Award.

Swimming in the American: A Memoir And Selected Writings

Biographies & Memoirs

Hiroshi Kashiwagi

Community & Culture

AACP, Inc.

The book gathers together plays that chronicle the experiences of Japanese Americans from the hardships of the Depression of the 1930s, through the bitterness and dislocation of the internment of Japanese Americans in World War II, through the rise of Asian American consciousness and pride in the late 1960s and 1970s to today.
 "Laughter and False Teeth" is perhaps the most famous of the plays presented since it was included in The Big AIIIEEEEE!: An Anthology of Chinese American and Japanese American Literature (1991), a staple book used in college Asian American Studies classes across the country. Procuring false teeth in an internment camp becomes a tragicomic observation of the breakdown of morality and decency in such places where even the dentist has to be bribed to do substandard work. "Kisa Gotami" (The Parable of the Mustard Seed) has the distinction of being George Takei's first role as an actor, a decade before his pioneering work as Sulu on Star Trek.
 "The Betrayed" a play that was included in Hiroshi's earlier book published by AACP, Swimming in the American, is perhaps the most powerful work, presenting as it does the fundamental conflicts between those Japanese Americans that cooperated with the government to prove their loyalty as Americans during the years of internment and those that resisted because the government had violated their rights as Americans.
 These are just a few of the plays in this book composed over the past 60 years and stored literally in a shoe box.

Shoe Box Plays

Asian American Curriculum Project, Inc.

Naef Design

Arts & Photography

History & Criticism

Seigensha Art Publishing

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Books by Hiroshi Kashiwagi