I Would Meet You Anywhere – A Book Talk with Susan Kiyo Ito
Saturday, March 30, 2 pm (in-person)
Growing up with adoptive nisei parents, Susan Kiyo Ito knew only that her birth mother was Japanese American and her father white. But finding and meeting her birth mother in her early twenties was only the beginning of her search for answers, history, and identity. Though the two share a physical likeness, an affinity for ice cream, and a relationship that sometimes even feels familial, there is an ever-present tension between them, as a decades-long tug-of-war pits her birth mother’s desire for anonymity against Ito’s need to know her origins, to see and be seen.
Along the way, Ito grapples with her own reproductive choices, the legacy of the Japanese American incarceration experience during World War II, and the true meaning of family.
“A brave, compassionate, and necessary memoir that bears witness to how we let go, when we hold on, and how families are not just born but chosen.”
— Rahna Reiko Rizzuto, author of Hiroshima in the Morning
Susan Kiyo Ito is the co-editor of the literary anthology A Ghost at Heart’s Edge: Stories and Poems of Adoption. Her work has appeared in numerous literary magazines and anthologies. A MacDowell Fellow, she has also been awarded residencies at the Mesa Refuge, Hedgebrook, and Blue Mountain Center. She has performed her solo show, The Ice Cream Gene, around the US and adapted Untold Stories: Life, Love, and Reproduction for the theater. She writes and teaches in the Bay Area.
Join us for a book reading, an engaging conversation with writer and artist Patricia Wakida, and tea. Book sales and signing will follow. Hardcover, Retail: $24.95
RSVP for free event. Limited space available.