Elevate Difference

Reviews tagged Japanese American

Airborne Dreams: "Nisei" Stewardesses and Pan American World Airways

Pan American World Airways was not simply an airline in the way that we understand airlines today. It was an icon, a gateway, and enjoyed (and still enjoys) a cult-like following. In this fascinating look into the Nisei stewardesses of Pan Am, Yano explores the postwar ideology of the airline and its relation to the experience of the Nisei stewardesses.

The Love Ceiling

As I started to write the review for this book, I realized that this is one of two books I have recently read about artists, more specifically painters—The Danish Girl being the other book that centered on artists/painters.

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

Some of the best American literature tells the story of the immigrant experience. Numerous writers have written about the sense of loss both material and psychological that comes with leaving your country and everything that is familiar to start a new life. Many of the characters in these novels never seem completely at home in their new land, but they soldier on for economic reasons, or because they’re committed to making a life in this new world Equally compelling is the story of first-generation Americans who have one foot in the modern world and one foot in the past.

Picking Bones from Ash

Marie Mutsuki Mockett’s debut novel, Picking Bones from Ash, drew me in from the first sentence. Satomi, one of the two main characters of the book, learns from her mother at a young age that in order to be safe in this world, a woman must be talented—not well educated and certainly not beautiful, a woman must be talented.

Patsy Mink: Ahead of the Majority

As the title indicates, Patsy Mink is the story of a woman of the same name, the first Asian American woman and the first woman of color elected to the U.S. Congress. If her story began and ended there, Mink’s life would have been important enough to have made history. Fortunately for every woman who lives in the world she transformed, Patsy Mink’s story and her life were far greater than that. Born in Maui, Hawaii in 1927, Mink faced a world where opportunities for people who shared her race and gender were all but nonexistent.