This Is My Own

By (author): Muriel Kitagawa

Edited by: Roy Miki

This Is My Own: Letters to Wes and Other Writings on Japanese Canadians, 1941–1948 is a collection of letters written by Muriel Kitagawa during this period, as well as statements, essays and manuscripts which arose from Kitagawa’s commitment to write about the injustices of the government’s policies and to educate the Canadian public on the history and perceptions of Japanese Canadians.

AUTHOR

Roy Miki

Roy Miki is the author of five books of poetry, including There (2006) and Surrender, which won the Governor General’s Award for poetry in 2002. A professor of literature at Simon Fraser University, now retired, Roy Miki was a pioneer of the Japanese Canadian redress movement, and his account, Redress: Inside the Japanese Canadian Call for Justice, was published in 2005. He lives in Vancouver.

AUTHOR

Muriel Kitagawa

Tsukiye Muriel Kitagawa (1912–1974) was born in Vancouver in 1912. As a Nisei (second generation Japanese Canadian) she was one of 21, 000 people of Japanese ancestry who were interned or forced by the federal government to give up their possessions and leave the west coast of B.C. in 1942. In 1932 Kitagawa was senior editor for The New Age, the first newspaper to express the Nisei perspective and provide an outlet for that generation’s expressive thought and literary writing. She also married that year. In 1938 she began writing for The New Canadian, where she was a regular contributor under several pen names. With four young children, including twins born right in the middle of the uprooting of the entire B.C. Japanese Canadian community, Kitagawa and her family moved to Toronto to join her brother Wesley Fujiwara who was attending university there in June of 1942.

Reviews

“The publication of This Is My Own means that [Kitagawa’s] passionate loyalty, her rage, haven’t been left to moulder in the grave. What a relief that is. What a cause for celebration.”
— Joy Kogawa


“This collection is skillfully woven together.”
Amerasia Review


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This Is My Own: Letters to Wes and Other Writings on Japanese Canadians, 1941–1948 is a collection of letters written by Muriel Kitagawa during this period, as well as statements, essays and manuscripts which arose from Kitagawa’s commitment to write about the injustices of the government’s policies and to educate the Canadian public on the history and perceptions of Japanese Canadians.

Reader Reviews

Details

Dimensions:

304 Pages
9in * 229mm * 6in * 152mm * 0.75in19mm
513gr
18.125oz

Published:

January 01, 1985

City of Publication:

Vancouver

Country of Publication:

CA

Publisher:

Talonbooks

ISBN:

9780889222304

9780889228726 – EPUB

Featured In:

All Books

Language:

eng

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