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Camp Notes and Other Writings
Two collections by an important Asian American writer -- Camp Notes and Other Poems and Desert Run: Poems and Stories -- return to print in one volume.
Mitsuye Yamada was born in Kyushu, Japan, and raised in Seattle, Washington, until the outbreak of World War II when her family was removed to a concentration camp in Idaho. Camp Notes and Other Writings recounts this experience.
Yamada's poetry yields a terse blend of emotions and imagery. Her twist of words creates a twist of vision that make her poetry come alive. The weight of her cultural experience-the pain of being perceived as an outsider all of her life-permeates her work.
Yamada's strength as a poet stems from the fact that she has managed to integrate both individual and collective aspects of her background, giving her poems a double impact. Her strong portrayal of individual and collective life experience stands out as a distinct thread in the fabric of contemporary literature by women.
"The core poems of Camp Notes and the title come from the notes I had taken when I was in camp, and it wasn’t published until thirty years after most of it was written. I was simply describing what was happening to me, and my thoughts. But, in retrospect, the collection takes on a kind of expanded meaning about that period in our history. As invariably happens, because Japanese American internment became such an issue in American history, I suppose I will be forever identified as the author of Camp Notes. Of course, I try to show that it’s not the only thing I ever did in my whole life; I did other things besides go to an internment camp during World War II. So, in some ways I keep producing to counteract that one image that gets set in the public mind. At the time that I was writing it, I wasn’t necessarily a political person. Now, when I reread it, even to myself, I think it probably has a greater warning about the dangers of being not aware, not aware of one’s own rights, not aware of helping other people who may be in trouble. I think that it does speak to our present age very acutely." -- Mitsuye Yamada , "You should not be invisible”: An Interview with Mitsuye Yamada, Contemporary Women's Writing, March 2014, Vol. 8 Issue 1
Read the whole interview at: https://academic.oup.com/cww/article/...
Mitsuye Yamada was born in Kyushu, Japan, and raised in Seattle, Washington, until the outbreak of World War II when her family was removed to a concentration camp in Idaho. Camp Notes and Other Writings recounts this experience.
Yamada's poetry yields a terse blend of emotions and imagery. Her twist of words creates a twist of vision that make her poetry come alive. The weight of her cultural experience-the pain of being perceived as an outsider all of her life-permeates her work.
Yamada's strength as a poet stems from the fact that she has managed to integrate both individual and collective aspects of her background, giving her poems a double impact. Her strong portrayal of individual and collective life experience stands out as a distinct thread in the fabric of contemporary literature by women.
"The core poems of Camp Notes and the title come from the notes I had taken when I was in camp, and it wasn’t published until thirty years after most of it was written. I was simply describing what was happening to me, and my thoughts. But, in retrospect, the collection takes on a kind of expanded meaning about that period in our history. As invariably happens, because Japanese American internment became such an issue in American history, I suppose I will be forever identified as the author of Camp Notes. Of course, I try to show that it’s not the only thing I ever did in my whole life; I did other things besides go to an internment camp during World War II. So, in some ways I keep producing to counteract that one image that gets set in the public mind. At the time that I was writing it, I wasn’t necessarily a political person. Now, when I reread it, even to myself, I think it probably has a greater warning about the dangers of being not aware, not aware of one’s own rights, not aware of helping other people who may be in trouble. I think that it does speak to our present age very acutely." -- Mitsuye Yamada , "You should not be invisible”: An Interview with Mitsuye Yamada, Contemporary Women's Writing, March 2014, Vol. 8 Issue 1
Read the whole interview at: https://academic.oup.com/cww/article/...
172 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1998
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170 people want to read
About the author
Mitsuye Yamada
10 books15 followersMitsuye Yamada is a Japanese American activist, feminist, essayist, poet, story writer, editor, and former professor of English.. Much of Yamada's work draws on the wartime incarceration of Japanese Americans.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
September 16, 2018
Primarily what my Asian American Lit professor wanted us to read was the Camp Notes section of this book, which was about Yamada and her family in an internment camp in Ohio during WWII.
It’s hard to be subjective about poetry, but Yamada constructed some really good ones in this collection.
It’s hard to be subjective about poetry, but Yamada constructed some really good ones in this collection.
August 18, 2022
To quote Ezra Pound, great literature is "simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree," and this is it.
Yamada uses simple language that is also somehow acrid, jarring, grotesque and politically charged. Whenever I read her work I am moved by questions of my own identity,
"How can double mean nothing?" I quoted this to my mother to see if it resonated with her, and oh boy, it did. Like yamada herself, also an immigrant, she felt that remaining loyal to America necessitated rejecting her own heritage. And it caused a lot of guilt and confusion. One of the greatest experiences I have when reading a good work of literature is remembering that pain, grief and confused feelings of identity are universal, eternal, in the same way that war and pestilence are.
Yamada uses simple language that is also somehow acrid, jarring, grotesque and politically charged. Whenever I read her work I am moved by questions of my own identity,
"How can double mean nothing?" I quoted this to my mother to see if it resonated with her, and oh boy, it did. Like yamada herself, also an immigrant, she felt that remaining loyal to America necessitated rejecting her own heritage. And it caused a lot of guilt and confusion. One of the greatest experiences I have when reading a good work of literature is remembering that pain, grief and confused feelings of identity are universal, eternal, in the same way that war and pestilence are.
October 13, 2017
An excellent collection. Overall, though, the poetry of the first book is stronger and more evocative (though much of the poetry in the second book is also very thoughtful), while the two short stories of the second book leave greater lasting impact.
January 15, 2022
I don't know shit about poetry, but I think this was pretty good stuff.
May 2, 2025
24 Harmony at the Fair Grounds
‘Why is the soldier boy in a cage
like that?
In the freedom of the child’s
universe
the uniformed guard
stood trapped in his outside cage.
We walked away from the gate and
grated guard
on sawdusted grounds
where millions trod once
to view prize cows
at the Puyallup Fair.
The gave us straws to sleep on
encased in muslin ticks.
Some of us were stalled under grandstand
seats
the egg with
parallel lines.
Lines formed for food
lines for showers
lines for the john
lines for shots.’
35 Search and Rescue
‘We joined the party
for the feel of freedom.
What are we looking for
among gnarled knuckles
in sagebrush forest?
An old man
out of his head
wandered off they said.
We’re scouts
to help him across the gate.
In a straight line
we inched over
his twisted trail.
Is he bio
degradable
half buried in desert dust?
He must be degraved
pulled up, potted, niched
up against the stone wall.
Enshrined.’
‘Why is the soldier boy in a cage
like that?
In the freedom of the child’s
universe
the uniformed guard
stood trapped in his outside cage.
We walked away from the gate and
grated guard
on sawdusted grounds
where millions trod once
to view prize cows
at the Puyallup Fair.
The gave us straws to sleep on
encased in muslin ticks.
Some of us were stalled under grandstand
seats
the egg with
parallel lines.
Lines formed for food
lines for showers
lines for the john
lines for shots.’
35 Search and Rescue
‘We joined the party
for the feel of freedom.
What are we looking for
among gnarled knuckles
in sagebrush forest?
An old man
out of his head
wandered off they said.
We’re scouts
to help him across the gate.
In a straight line
we inched over
his twisted trail.
Is he bio
degradable
half buried in desert dust?
He must be degraved
pulled up, potted, niched
up against the stone wall.
Enshrined.’
February 28, 2018
Yamada weaves together poetry and prose in a collection of two works. Together they explore her family’s history, between Japan and America and in and out of incarceration.
July 5, 2024
The last book I got from East Wind ❤️🩹
August 25, 2025
stitches of light, lichen twisting
August 9, 2007
A deceptively transparent collection of textual materials, Camp Notes and Other Writings contains many beautiful gems, including poems like "Lichens," one of my personal favorites. I also consider this book to be a part of the Asian American "canon."
May 25, 2016
An important work by a central figure in Third World Women's writing that captures what feminists in the 80s called "life in the hyphen" or "on the margins." The poems about the Japanese concentration camps add an important element to our understanding of "American" literature.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews