SAVE THE DATE
Bay Area Book Event
Saturday, April 8th, 1 pm
J-Sei, 1285 66th Street, Emeryville
SECRET HARVESTS
A Hidden Story of Separation
and the Resilience of a Family Farm
Every family has secrets.
A Japanese American family, separated by racism and the discrimination of people
with developmental disabilities, are reunited seventy years later, returning to their roots on a farm and bound by secrets.
Meet award-winning sansei author David Mas Masumoto
and yonsei illustrator Patricia Wakida
Join us in conversation in-person or online,
moderated by former newscaster Wendy Tokuda.
Hear the story. Buy a book. Celebrate Secret Harvests!
RSVP to jill@j-sei.org with “secret harvests” in the memo.
A special exhibit of artwork from Secret Harvests by Patricia Wakida will be on view from April 8 – 30th, gallery hours MTuThFr 1 to 4 pm, and by appointment.
Patricia Wakida (illustrator) is a writer, artist and bibliophile. Her work spans many mediums and genres: from book editing and essay writing, to oral histories and printing: linoleum blocks, wood and metal type, and hundred year old letterpresses.
David Mas Masumoto (author) is an award-winning author and organic farmer (peaches, apricots, nectarines and grapes for raisins) living and working in the Central Valley of California. He has written 12 books including Epitaph for a Peach, Changing Season, Wisdom of the Last Farmer and more.
About the Book
Organic peach and raising farmer David Mas Masumoto’s new memoir follows a journey of discovering a “lost” aunt, who was separated from the family due to racism and discrimination against the disabled. Aunt Shizuko had both mental and physical disabilities due to childhood meningitis. In 1942, when Executive Order 9066 was signed, authorizing the mass removal of all persons of Japanese descent off of the West Coast of the United States, her parents had to make the excrutiating decision between taking her with them into the WWII concentration camp at Gila River, Arizona, or to place her as a “ward” of the state in an institution.
Family lore had convinced them that Aunt Shizuko had eventually died, but seventy years later, she was found alive and living a few miles from our family farm. How did she survive? Why was she kept hidden? How did both shame and resilience empower my family to forge forward in a land that did not want them? In this new memoir, Masumoto is haunted by these questions and driven to explore his own identity and the meaning of family— specially as farmers tied to the land—uncovering stories that binds him to a sense of history buried in the earth that he works and a sense of place that defines his community.
Sansei writer Masumoto teamed up with yonsei artist Patricia Wakida for this exploration of community and family secrets.