Synopses & Reviews
In these buoyant and inventive stories, Yamashita transfers classic tales across boundaries and questions what an inheritance — familial, cultural, emotional, artistic — really means. In a California of the '60s and '70s, characters examine the contents of deceased relatives' freezers, tape-record high-school locker-room chatter, or collect a community's gossip while cleaning the teeth of its inhabitants. Mr. Darcy is the captain of the football team, Mansfield Park materializes in a suburb of L.A., bake sales replace balls, and station wagons, not horse-drawn carriages, are the preferred mode of transit. The stories of traversing class, race, and gender leap into our modern world with wit and humor.
Review
"Sansei and Sensibility challenges and delights, while laying bare the familial loyalties we work to preserve and eschew." Boston Globe
Review
"An elegantly written, wryly affectionate mashup of Jane Austen and the Japanese immigrant experience... Yamashita's reimagining of Austen is sympathetic and funny — and as on target as the movie Clueless." Kirkus
Review
"The range of characters, sparkling humor, connective themes, and creative ambition all showcase Yamashita's impressive powers." Publishers Weekly
About the Author
Karen Tei Yamashita is the author of seven books, including I Hotel, finalist for the National Book Award, and most recently, Letters to Memory, all published by Coffee House Press. Recipient of the John Dos Passos Prize for Literature and a US Artists Ford Foundation Fellowship, she is Professor Emerita of Literature and Creative Writing at the University of California, Santa Cruz.