Synopses & Reviews
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.
Review
A brave compassionate, and heart-wrenching memoir, of one womans quest to redeem the past while learning to live fully in the present.”
Kate Moses, author of Cakewalk, A Memoir and Wintering: A Novel of Sylvia Plath
"This searing and redemptive memoir is an explosive account of motherhood reconstructed."
Ayelet Waldman, author of Red Hook Road
"This book is an important contribution to the growing understanding that we are all part of history, and we all make history. A moving account of a contemporary voyage, which is also a voyage back in time, reckoning with and bearing witness to one of the great tragedies of the last century."
Susan Griffin, author of A Chorus of Stones
"If remembering lies at the heart of all memoir, the best memoir goes far deeper, asking questions about the propulsive nature of time, the consequences of forgetting, and the treacherous liberations of solitude. Hiroshima in the Morning is a memoir of the most sophisticated kind, a lyric, a quest, a universal poem."
Beth Kephart, author of A Slant of Sun, a National Book Award finalist
"Rahna Reiko Rizzuto's new book is intimate and global, lyrical and clear-eyed, a compelling personal narrative, and an important social document. Here past and present, Hiroshima and 9/11, interweave to tell a story of unendurable loss and tragedy but also of tenacity, survival, and rebirth"
Lauren Kessler, author of Stubborn Twig: Three Generations in the Life of a Japanese American Family
Synopsis
2010 FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD
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.
Synopsis
A writer encounters Hiroshimas survivors at the original Ground Zero as 9/11 changes her marriage and family back home.
Synopsis
In this National Book Critics Award finalist memoir, Rahna Reiko Rizzuto wrestles with the most personal and epic issues of our time. In June 2001 she travels to Hiroshima to interview survivors of the atomic bomb, while her husband and two young sons remain in New York. But initial interviews feel rehearsed, and the survivors reveal little beyond already published accounts. Then September 11 changes everything. The vulnerability exposed by the attacks shatters the survivor's carefully constructed narratives. They open up to Rizzuto in astonishing ways, describing in detail their agonizing experiences.
Separated from family as her world seems to be falling apart, Rizzuto sees her marriage begin to crumble as she questions her role as a wife and mother. The parallel narratives of Hiroshima in the survivors' own words, and of Rizzuto's personal awakening, show memory not as history, but as 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.
About the Author
Rahna Reiko Rizzuto: Rahna Reiko Rizzutos highly acclaimed first novel,
Why She Left Us, won an American Book Award in 2000, and was praised by the New York Times as ambitious, lyrical, and intriguing.” She is a recipient of the US/Japan Creative Artist Fellowship, funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, which inspired her memoir,
Hiroshima in the Morning; she is also the associate editor of
The NuyorAsian Anthology: Asian American Writings About New York City; and she is a faculty member in the MFA in creative writing program at Goddard College where she teaches fiction and nonfiction. Her essays and short stories have appeared in journals and newspapers including the
Los Angeles Times,
Salon, and the
Crab Creek Review, and in anthologies including
Mothers Who Think,
Because I Said So, and
Topography of War. Rizzuto is half-Japanese/half-Caucasian. She grew up on the Big Island of Hawaii and now lives in Brooklyn.