Our August Author: Naomi Hirahara

A quick introduction to our August author, Naomi Hirahara (Summer of the Big Bachi). She has her own website with a Q&A for reading groups that's worth a look and I also recommend browsing the nonfiction books section to get a feel for how grounded her work is in California history. She's written a book Green Makers: Japanese American Gardners in Southern California which gave me a flashback to an exhibition I saw a few years back at the Japanese American National Museum.

She also contributes to a group blog, Murderati, with a post each Wednesday. Language geeks take note that at the end of each post she explicates a Japanese word from one of her books, for example,

WEDNESDAY’S WORD: monku (SUMMER OF THE BIG BACHI, page 87)

To complain or a complaint. Once upon a time in Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo, there was a shoe store that sold T-shirts that read, "Monku, Monku, Monku." In this record-breaking heat in Southern California, monku is plentiful. But considering the unstable situation our world is in, a little heat is easy to bear.

Tags: Naomi Hirahara, California, language