A young mother fights impossible odds to be reunited with her child in this acutely insightful first novel about an intercultural marriage gone terribly wrong.
Jill Parker is an American painter living in Japan. Far from the trendy gaijin neighborhoods of downtown Tokyo, she’s settled in a remote seaside village where she makes ends meet as a bar hostess. Her world appears to open when she meets Yusuke, a savvy and sensitive art gallery owner who believes in her talent. But their love affair, and subsequent marriage, is doomed to a life of domestic hell, for Yusuke is the chonan, the eldest son, who assumes the role of rigid patriarch in his traditional family while Jill’s duty is that of a servile Japanese wife. A daily battle of wills ensues as Jill resists instruction in the proper womanly arts. Even the long-anticipated birth of a son, Kei, fails to unite them. Divorce is the only way out, but in Japan a foreigner has no rights to custody, and Jill must choose between freedom and abandoning her child.
Told with tenderness, humor, and an insider’s knowledge of contemporary Japan, Losing Kei is the debut novel of an exceptional expatriate voice.
 Suzanne Kamata's work has appeared in over one hundred publications. She is the editor of The Broken Bridge: Fiction from Expatriates in Literary Japan and a forthcoming anthology from Beacon Press on parenting children with disabilities. A five-time nominee for the Pushcart Prize, she has twice won the Nippon Airways/Wingspan Fiction Contest.

Losing Kei

Literature & Fiction

Kamata, Suzanne

United States

Leapfrog Press

**ALA Rainbow List** **Nominated for the Cybils Young Adult Bloggers Literary Award** At sixteen, Trudy Baxter is tired of her debutante mom, her deadbeat dad, and her standing reservation at the juvenile detention center. Changing her name to Trudy Sin, she cranks up her major chops as a singer and starts a band, gathering around other girls ill at ease in their own lives. Cassie Haywood, would-have-been beauty queen, was scarred in an accident in which her alcoholic mom was killed. But she can still sing and play her guitar, even though she seeks way too much relief from the pain in her body and her heart through drugs, and way too much relief from loneliness through casual sex. Still, it's Cassie who hears former child prodigy Harumi Yokoyama playing in a punk band at a party, and enlists her, outraging Harumi's overbearing first-generation Japanese parents. The fourth member is Esther Shealy, who joins as a drummer in order to be close to Cassie--the long-time object of her unrequited love--and Harumi, her estranged childhood friend. Together, they are Screaming Divas, and they're quickly swept up as a local sensation. Then, just as they are about to achieve their rock-girl dreams, a tragedy strikes.

Screaming Divas

Genre Fiction

Simon Schuster Books for Young Readers

Yomimono is a literary journal of eclectic and vibrant writing from Japan and the world.

Yomimono

Yejidé, Morowa

Oketani, Shogo

Halebsky, Judy

Pierce, Marian

BLACK, Edward

Bird, Marcus

Slater, Ann Tashi

Yoshida, Joanne G.

Joritz-Nakagawa, Jane

World Literature

CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

Asian/Pacific American Honor Award for Young Adult LiteratureNamed Book of Outstanding Merit by Bank Street CollegeGrand Prize Winner of the Paris Book FestivalSakura Medal NomineeSkipping Stones Honor AwardInternational Book Award Winner for YAAiko Cassidy is fourteen and lives with her sculptor mother in a small Midwestern town. For most of her young life Aiko, who has cerebral palsy, has been her mother's muse. But now, she no longer wants to pose for the sculptures that have made her mother famous and have put food on the table. Aiko works hard on her own dream of becoming a great manga artist with a secret identity. When Aiko's mother invites her to Paris for a major exhibition of her work, Aiko at first resists. She'd much rather go to Japan, Manga Capital of the World, where she might be able to finally meet her father, the indigo farmer. When she gets to France, however, a hot waiter with a passion for manga and an interest in Aiko makes her wonder if being invisible is such a great thing after all. And a side trip to Lourdes might just change her life. Gadget Girl began as a novella published in Cicada. The story won the SCBWI Magazine Merit Award in Fiction and was included in an anthology of the best stories published in Cicada over the past ten years.

Gadget Girl: The Art of Being Invisible

Children's Books

GemmaMedia

The American writer Suzanne Kamata had lived in Japan for more than half of her life, yet she had never explored the small nearby islands of the Inland Sea. The islands, first made famous by Donald Richie’s The Inland Sea 50 years ago, are noted for displaying artwork created by prominent, and sometimes curious, international artists and sculptors: Naoshima’s wealth of museums, including one devoted to 007, Yayoi Kusama’s polka dot pumpkins, Kazuo Katase’s blue teacup, and a monster rising out of a well on the hour in Sakate, called “Anger at the Bottom of the Sea”―to name a few. Spurred by her teen-aged daughter Lilia's burgeoning interest in art and adventure, Kamata sets out to show her the islands’ treasures. Mother and daughter must confront several barriers on their adventure. Lilia is deaf and uses a wheelchair. It is not always easy to get onto -- or off of -- the islands, not to mention the challenges of language, culture, and a generation gap. A Girls’ Guide to the Islands takes the reader on a rare visit by a unique mother and daughter team. (P O'Hare Gemma Open door for Literacy)

A Girls' Guide to the Islands (Gemma Open Door)

Parenting & Relationships

Disabilities & Hyperactivity

Gemma Open Door

2019 NCTA Freeman Book Award Honorable MentionFifteen-year-old Aiko Cassidy, a bicultural girl with cerebral palsy, grew up in Michigan with her single mother. For as long as she could remember, it was just the two of them. When a new stepfather and a baby half sister enter her life, she finds herself on the margins. Having recently come into contact with her biological father, she is invited to spend the summer with his indigo-growing family in a small Japanese farming village. Aiko thinks she just might fit in better in Japan. If nothing else, she figures the trip will inspire her manga story, Gadget Girl. However, Aiko's stay in Japan is not quite the easygoing vacation that she expected. Her grandmother is openly hostile toward her, and she soon learns of painful family secrets that have been buried for years. Even so, she takes pleasure in meeting new friends. She is drawn to Taiga, the figure skater who shows her the power of persistence against self-doubt. Sora is a fellow manga enthusiast who introduces Aiko to a wide circle of like-minded artists. And then there is Kotaro, a refugee from the recent devastating earthquake in northeastern Japan. As she gets to know her biological father and the story of his break with her mother, Aiko begins to rethink the meaning of family and her own place in the world.

Indigo Girl

Pearl Dubois is a Southern belle. She was born in New Orleans to a prominent and wealthy family. During the Second World War, she wants to help the Allies. She lands a job in Paris working for the Office of Strategic Services. The OSS is the first spy agency in the United States. Its goal is to gather intelligence about the Germans and to win the war. Pearl convinces her boss to send her on a secret mission. She will bring photos of German spies to General George Patton, who is stationed near the Belgian border. On the way to the general's camp, Pearl and three companions are ambushed by Nazi soldiers. She becomes a prisoner and must survive by her wits until she can plot her escape. Based on the real-life experiences of Gertrude Sanford Legendre, the first woman to be captured as a spy during WWII, Pearl's adventures are both riveting and inspiring.

The Spy (Gemma Open)

Elise Faulkner is more at home in the waters of her beloved Lake Michigan than on land where her beauty queen mom is always on her back about her lack of a social life; her sister is dating the boy of her dreams; her favorite penpal--the one who wrote about mermaids in Ghana--has gotten married and ended their correspondence; and no one's allowed to talk about her glamorous great-grandmother, the deep-sea wreck diver. Elise is biding her time with books until she can flee. But then crazy Chiara Hanover pops into her life, as does Miguel, a mysterious carnival worker whose dark future has been predicted by a gypsy.

The Mermaids of Lake Michigan

Romance

Multicultural & Interracial

Wyatt-MacKenzie Publishing

Thirteen-year-old Satoshi Matsumoto spent the last three years living in Atlanta where he was the star of his middle-school baseball team--a slugger with pro potential, according to his coach. Now that his father's work in the US has come to an end, he's moved back to his hometown in rural Japan. Living abroad has changed him, and now his old friends in Japan are suspicious of his new foreign ways. Even worse, his childhood foe Shintaro, whose dad has ties to gangsters, is in his homeroom. After he joins his new school's baseball team, Satoshi has a chance to be a hero until he makes a major-league error. "A heart-warming story about a baseball player who learns that teamwork is much more important than being the star of the team. I loved the family dynamics and depiction of life, and especially baseball, in Japan."--Shauna Holyoak, author of Kazu Jones and the Denver Dognappers (Hyperion, 2019) "A story set in Japan rich in details only Kamata, an insider, could share. With ease and respect, she weaves the pressures, agonies, and loyalties of Satoshi's life at home, at school and on a junior high baseball team with the practices and traditions of the game played in Japan. I am a big fan of this middle-grade homerun!"--Annie Donwerth Chikamatsu, award-winning author of Somewhere Among (Atheneum/Caitlyn Dlouhy Books, 2017) "Pop Flies really pops! A lively, fun, easy read that draws you in and keeps you guessing."--Dori Jones Yang, award-winning author of The Forbidden Temptation of Baseball (SparkPress, 2017)

Pop Flies, Robo-Pets, and Other Disasters

Sports & Outdoors

Red Chair Press

One Elm Books

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