Good Trouble Reading Group: Stories by Wakako Yamauchi

We’ll be discussing a selection of short stories by Wakako Yamauchi from her collection Rosebud and Other Stories.

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. Yamauchi and her family were sent to an internment camp during World War II, where she made lifelong friendships and wrote for the camp newspaper. Later she found acclaim as a playwright and fiction writer; her first story was featured in the pioneering 1974 anthology Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Asian-American Writers. She wrote the stories in Rosebud later in life, bittersweet reflections on her family’s time spent in internment. Through these stories we enter a world of desert farmers, factory workers, gamblers, housewives, con artists, and dreamers. Elegantly simple in words and complex in resonance, these stories reveal hidden strength, resilience, and the persistence of hope.