(Ebook) The Grave on the Wall by Brandon Shimoda ISBN 9780872867932, 0872867935, 2019015708, 2019020566

(Ebook) The Grave on the Wall by Brandon Shimoda ISBN 9780872867932, 0872867935, 2019015708, 2019020566

Winner of the 2020 PEN Open Book AwardBest of 2019: Nonfiction – Entropy MagazineA memoir & book of mourning, a grandson’s attempt to reconcile his own uncontested citizenship with his grandfather’s lifelong struggle.Award-winning poet Brandon Shimoda has crafted a lyrical portrait of his paternal grandfather, Midori Shimoda, whose life–child migrant, talented photographer, suspected enemy alien & spy, desert wanderer, American citizen–mirrors the arc of Japanese America in the twentieth century. In a series of pilgrimages, Shimoda records the search to find his grandfather, & unfolds, in the process, a moving elegy on memory & forgetting.Praise for The Grave on the Wall: Shimoda brings his poetic lyricism to this moving & elegant memoir, the structure of which reflects the fragmentation of memories. … It is at once wistful & devastating to see Midori’s life come full circle … In between is a life with tragedy, love, & the horrors unleashed by the atomic bomb.–Booklist, starred reviewIn a weaving meditation, Brandon Shimoda pens an elegant eulogy for his grandfather Midori, yet also for the living, we who survive on the margins of graveyards & rituals of our own making.–Karen Tei Yamashita, author of Letters to MemorySometimes a work of art functions as a dream. At other times, a work of art functions as a conscience. In the tradition of Juan Rulfo’s Pedro Páramo, Brandon Shimoda’s The Grave on the Wall is both. It is also the type of fragmented reckoning only America could instigate.–Myriam Gurba, author of Mean Brandon Shimoda is the author of six books of poetry, most recently The Desert (Song Cave, 2018) and Evening Oracle (Letter Machine Editions, 2016), which received the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America. His memoir & book of mourning, The Grave on the Wall (City Lights, 2019) received the 2020 PEN Open Book Award.