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Generations of Japanese Americans merge with Jane Austen’s characters in these lively stories, pairing uniquely American histories with reimagined classics.In these buoyant and inventive stories, Karen Tei Yamashita transfers classic tales across boundaries and questions what an inheritance—familial, cultural, emotional, artistic—really means. In a California of the sixties and seventies, 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 ballroom dances, 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.
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.
Summary
Generations of Japanese Americans merge with Jane Austen's characters in these lively stories, pairing uniquely American histories with reimagined classics.
Foreword
Endorsements (potential): Ruth Ozeki, Cornell West, Karen Joy Fowler
3-city author tour
Early access copies
National print, radio, and online campaign
Targeted bookseller mailing
Promotion at: WI, AWP, BEA
Promotion on Coffee House Press e-newsletter, website, and social media channels
Giveaways on Twitter, Instagram, & Goodreads
Simultaneous print and ebook release, with ebook ISBN to be included on all press materials, author and publisher websites, and whenever print ISBN is listed
Targeted publicity to promote author's speaking engagements
Additional text
Praise for Karen Tei Yamashita
“Fiercely satirical. . . . Yamashita presents [an] intricate plot with mordant wit.” —New York Times Book Review
“A stunner. . . . An exquisite mystery novel. But this is a novel of dystopia and apocalypse; the mystery concerns the tragic flaws of human nature.” —Library Journal, starred review
“Yamashita handles her eccentrics and the setting of their adventures with panache. David Foster Wallace meets Gabriel García Márquez.” —Publishers Weekly
“With a subtle ominousness, Yamashita sets up her hopeful, prideful characters—and, in the process, the entire genre of pioneer lit—for a fall.” —Village Voice
“Shaped and voiced with literary flair, this is clearly a book Yamashita felt compelled to write, and her sense of purpose makes this historical excavation feel deeply personal.” —Kirkus
