CSUDH Students Hear from Noted Novelist

Novelist Karen Tei Yamashita (left) was the guest speaker for the annual Patricia Eliet Memorial Lecture, presented by the Department of English at CSU Dominguez Hills in Carson on April 12 in the Loker Student Union Ballroom. Yamashita is the author of “Through the Arc of the Rain Forest,” “Brazil-Maru,” “Tropic of Orange,” “Circle K Cycles,” “I Hotel,” and the forthcoming “Letters to Memory.” As part of the university’s series of programs commemorating the 75th anniversary of Executive Order 9066, her lecture addressed the local history of Japanese American incarceration through two characters in “Tropic of Orange” — Manzanar Murakami, an aging, homeless Sansei, and his granddaughter Emi, an executive for a local broadcast TV news station. Yamashita, a professor of literature and creative writing at UC Santa Cruz, was introduced by assistant professors Jane J. Lee (right) and Roderick Hernandez. (Photo by J.K. YAMAMOTO/Rafu Shimpo)