Legacy
Hisaye Yamamoto received acclaim for her work almost from the very beginning of her career. She was, as King-Kok Cheung noted, “one of the first Japanese American writers to gain national recognition after the war, when anti-Japanese sentiment was still rampant.” Although she herself resisted being rigidly characterized as a voice for Japanese or Asian groups (“I don’t think you can write aiming at a specifically Asian-American audience if you want to write freely”), she was considered one of the premier Asian-American authors.
Awards and Fellowships
- 2010: Asian American Writers Workshop's Lifetime Achievement Award
- 1988: Association for Asian American Studies's Award for Literature for Seventeen Syllables
- 1986: Before Columbus Foundation's American Book Award for Lifetime Achievement
- 1952: "Yoneko's Earthquake" named one of Best American Short Stories
- Early 1950s: Declined a Stanford University Writing Fellowship in order to pursue social work
- 1950-51: John Hay Whitney Foundation Opportunity Fellowship
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“What is popularly called fame is nothing but an empty name and a legacy from paganism.”
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