Legends from Camp

by Lawson Fusao Inada

Overview

Winner, 1994 American Book Award. Los Angeles Times Book Award for Poetry finalist. "Recommended for classroom and library use, this book will add a fresh dimension to a growing body of literature that remembers, humanizes, and shares the Japanese-American internment experience for new generations."— Choice

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781566890045
Publisher:	Coffee House Press
Publication date:	07/01/1992
Pages:	112
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.60(d)
Age Range:	15 Years

Editorial Reviews

The preface to this volume presents an apologia of sorts: `` . . . don't let the word poetry get in your way . . . this book is full of songs, paintings, photographs, prayers, and stories--that just happen to look like poetry.'' Inada, who co-edited The Big Aiiieeeee! , is correct in pointing this out; the work is what one might call populist writing, which has become fashionable along with the multicultural movement with which he associates himself as an ``Ethnic Minority Third World Asian American Poet.'' His long opening section is a meditation on the Japanese internment camps during World War II. Unfortunately, the writing is not precise enough to convey a concrete sense of that experience. Generally these pieces are unsophisticated in tone, technique and conceptual structure, although at times the author's sunny disposition comes through. ``Poem for Television'' offers some characteristic writing: ``Welcome to my poem. / Welcome to my home. / This is my song, my story,/ this is my tell-a-vision / to you . . . '' Derivative of Whitman, but neither inventive nor sonorous, the writing is often intended for ``community performance'' in which music and dancing might bolster it. (Dec.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

The preface to Inada's first book of poems since 1971 ( Before the War, LJ 1/1/71) begins by reassuring the reader: ``Not to worry, please--this book is for you, whoever you may be, and this book is not intended to be `for poetry people only.' '' Indeed, the poems in the five sections that follow are playful, full of life, and easy to understand, even when the subject is somber--as in the first section, ``Camp,'' which recounts the author's experience as a boy in the Japanese internment camps. The other four sections cover a wide array of subjects, from jazz, to life in Fresno, California, to love and family. Each section begins with a prose introduction that very effectively gives the reader a background for the poems that follow. Recommended for general collections.-- Jessica Grim, Oberlin Coll. Lib., Ohio

Library Journal