Arts and Culture Videos

Biographer Frank Abe presents unseen images and stories from author John Okada’s life and Shawn Wong shares how he and his friends rediscovered and republished “No-No Boy” in the 1970s. Introduction by Stesha Brandon, Literature and Humanities Program Manager at the Seattle Public Library. Moderated by Karen Maeda Allman, literary agent and former Elliott Bay Book Company bookseller.

 “’No-No Boy’ is the great Japanese American novel, one that was years ahead of its time in capturing the raw emotion and anger of a dislocated people returning to Seattle from four years of wartime incarceration,” says Abe. “It’s also a great novel of Seattle, with passages evoking the buildings and alleyways of Chinatown that still exist today. Okada once worked at the old Central Library, so it’s fitting the Library as an institution that promotes reading and community should recognize the 100^th anniversary of his birth with a reconsideration of his life and legacy.”

Presented by the Seattle Public Library. This is the first of a series of programs honoring the seminal Seattle author, John Okada.

Related video: The Postwar Seattle Chinatown of John Okada