The Knowing Body: Elements of Contemporary Performance and Dance

Steinman, Louise

Boston, MA: Shambhala Publications, 1986

The Souvenir: A Daughter Discovers Her Father's War

After finding a box containing letters her father had written to her mother during World War II, as well as a Japanese flag bearing a profound inscription, the author embarks on a mission to discover what happened to her father and the men of his Twenty-fifth Infantry, which takes her all the way to Japan to return the flag to its rightful owner, where she forms a bond with the surviving family and ultimately discovers a side of her father she never knew. Reprint.

Biographies & Memoirs

Leaders & Notable People

Plume

Arts & Literature

Thorndike Pr

A lyrical literary memoir that explores the exhilarating, discomforting, and ultimately healing process of Polish-Jewish reconciliation taking place in Poland today “I’d grown up with the phrase ‘Never forget’ imprinted on my psyche. Its corollary was more elusive. Was it possible to remember—at least to recall—a world that existed before the calamity?” In the winter of 2000, Louise Steinman set out to attend an international Bearing Witness Retreat at Auschwitz-Birkenau at the invitation of her Zen rabbi, who felt the Poles had gotten a “bum rap.” A bum rap? Her own mother could not bear to utter the word “Poland,” a country, Steinman was taught, that allowed and perhaps abetted the genocide that decimated Europe’s Jewish population, including members of her own extended family. As Steinman learns more about her lost ancestors, though, she finds that the history of Polish-Jewish relations is far more complex. Although German-occupied Poland was the site of horrific Jewish persecution, Poland was for centuries the epicenter of European Jewish life. After the war, Polish-Jewish relations soured. For Poles under Communism, it was taboo to examine or discuss the country’s Jewish past. Among Jews in the Diaspora, there was little acknowledgment of the Poles’ immense suffering during its dual occupation. Steinman’s research leads her to her grandparents’ town of Radomsko, whose eighteen thousand Jews were deported or shot during the Nazi occupation. As she delves deeper into the town’s and her family’s history, Steinman discovers a prewar past where a lively community of Jews and Catholics lived shoulder to shoulder, where a Polish Catholic painted the blue ceiling of the Radomsko synagogue, and a Jewish tinsmith roofed the spires of the Catholic church. She also uncovers untold stories of Poles who rescued their Jewish neighbors in Radomsko and helps bring these heroes to the light of day. Returning time and again to Poland over the course of a decade, Steinman finds Poles who are seeking the truth about the past, however painful, and creating their own rituals to teach their towns about the history of their lost Jewish neighbors. This lyrical memoir chronicles her immersion in the exhilarating, discomforting, sometimes surreal, and ultimately healing process of Polish-Jewish reconciliation.

The Crooked Mirror: A Memoir of Polish-Jewish Reconciliation

Historical

Beacon Press

Arts & Photography

Performing Arts

Shambhala

Steinman's book really stands alone among performance art books. While there are many that document what particular artists are doing, this one offers a way in for a person who wants to perform (or know more about how performance artists work). Must reading for anyone interested in performance art, it will also be fascinating to those in theatre, playwriting, visual arts and performance of any sort.

The Knowing Body: The Artist as Storyteller in Contemporary Performance

Humor & Entertainment

North Atlantic Books

Louise Steinman’s American childhood in the fifties was bound by one unequivocal condition: “Never mention the war to your father.” That silence sustained itself until the fateful day Steinman opened an old ammunition box left behind after her parents’ death. In it she discovered nearly 500 letters her father had written to her mother during his service in the Pacific War and a Japanese flag mysteriously inscribed to Yoshio Shimizu. Setting out to determine the identity of Yoshio Shimizu and the origins of the silken flag, Steinman discovered the unexpected: a hidden side of her father, the green soldier who achingly left his pregnant wife to fight for his life in a brutal 165-day campaign that changed him forever. Her journey to return the “souvenir” to its owner not only takes Steinman on a passage to Japan and the Philippines, but also returns her to the age of her father’s innocence, where she learned of the tender and expressive man she’d never known. Steinman writes with the same poignant immediacy her father did in his letters. Together their stories in The Souvenir create an evocative testament to the ways in which war changes one generation and shapes another.

Community & Culture

Louise Steinman's father never talked about his experiences in the Pacific during WWII-like many men of his generation. All she knew was that a whistling kettle unnerved him, that Asian food was banned from the house, and that she was never to cry in front of him.
 After her parents' deaths, Steinman discovered a box containing some four hundred letters her father had written to her mother during the war. Among the letters, she found a Japanese flag inscribed with elegant calligraphy. The flag said: "To Yoshio Shimizu given to him in the Great East Asian War to be fought to the end. If you believe in it, you win." Intrigued by her father's letters and compelled to know how this flag came to be in his possession, Steinman sets out on a quest to learn what happened to her father and the men of his Twenty-fifth Infantry Division.
 Over the course of her exploration, Steinman decides to return the flag to the family of Yoshio Shimizu, the fallen Japanese soldier. She travels to the snow country of Japan and visits the battlefield in the Philippines where her father's division fought-the place where Yoshio lost his life and his flag. In the end, Steinman discovers a side of her father she never knew, and, astonishingly, she develops a kinship with the surviving family of his enemy.
 Weaving together her father's letters with the story of her own personal journey, Steinman presents a powerful view of how war changed one generation and shaped another.

Algonquin Books

The articles and artwork in this catalogue developed out  of a three-year Arts Partnership project between the Japanese American  National Museum and its Southern California neighbors. Institutional  partners included the Korean American Museum, Plaza de la Raza, Watts  Towers Arts Center, the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, and  the Skirball Cultural Center. The catalogue includes color  reproductions of artwork that appeared in the exhibitions. In  addition, the book includes interpretive essays, biographies of the  artists, information on all of the institutional partners, and a  classroom guide that gives examples of projects to encourage the  sharing of family stories and cross-cultural dialogue.    Participating Artists: Judy Chan, Heeyon Chang, Michael Cho, Joyce  Dallal, Charles Dickson, Julie Sim-Edwards, Aaron Glass, Yolanda  Gonzalez, Glenn Kaino, Soo Jin Kim, Karen Kimura, Eddy Kurushima,  Frank LaPena, Judith A. Lowry, Yong Soon Min, Kori Newkirk, Linda  Nishio, Miguel Angel Reyes, David Alan Yamamoto, and Kim Yasuda.

Finding Family Stories: An Arts Partnership 1995-1998

Politics & Social Sciences

Bedoya, Roberto

Chan, Judy

ALFARO, LUIS

Simon, Leonard

Yamamoto, Traise

Lee, Sara

Hildebrand, Charlotte

Benitez, Tomas

Higa, Karin

Kim, Kristine M.

Sociology

Japanese Amer Natl Museum

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