Rosebud and Other Stories

In your heart there will always be a small ache reminding you that a place waits for your return. The dancers pause. The singers call. The fireflies await.

Secret desires, unfulfilled longing, and irrepressible humor flow through the stories of Wakako Yamauchi, writings that depict the lives of Nisei, second-generation Japanese Americans. Through the medium of Yamauchi’s storytelling, readers enter the world of desert farmers, factory workers, gamblers, housewives, con artists, and dreamers. Elegantly simple in words and complex in resonance, her stories reveal hidden strength, resilience, and the persistence of hope.

• Wakako Yamauchi, Author

• Lillian Howan, Editor

  Lillian Howan is an attorney and writer whose parents immigrated to the United States from Tahiti and Raiatea. She spent her early childhood in Tahiti and later graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law. She is the editor of Wakako Yamauchi’s collection, Rosebud and Other Stories (University of Hawai‘i Press, 2011). Her writings have been published in the Asian American Literary Review, Café Irreal, Calyx, New England Review, and Under Western Eyes, an anthology edited by Garrett Hongo.