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Feminist Press
September 2010
On Sale: September 14, 2010
320 pages
ISBN: 1558616675
EAN: 9781558616677
Paperback
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Non-Fiction Memoir
In June 2001 Rahna Reiko Rizzuto went to Hiroshima in search
of a deeper understanding of her war-torn heritage. She
planned to spend six months there, interviewing the few
remaining survivors of the atomic bomb. A mother of two
young boys, she was encouraged to go by her husband, who
quickly became disenchanted by her absence. It is her first solo life adventure, immediately
exhilarating for her, but her research starts off badly.
Interviews with the hibakusha feel rehearsed, and the
survivors reveal little beyond published accounts. Then the
attacks on September 11 change everything. The survivors'
carefully constructed memories are shattered, causing them
to relive their agonizing experiences and to open up to
Rizzuto in astonishing ways. Separated from family and country while the world seems to
fall apart, Rizzuto's marriage begins to crumble as she
wrestles with her ambivalence about being a wife and mother.
Woven into the story of her own awakening are the stories of
Hiroshima in the survivors' own words. The parallel
narratives explore the role of memory in our lives and show
how memory is not history but a story we tell ourselves to
explain who we are. Rahna Reiko Rizzuto's highly acclaimed first novel, Why She
Left Us, won an American Book Award in 2000. She is a
faculty member in the MFA in creative writing program at
Goddard College, and lives in Brooklyn, New York.
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