Seventeen Syllables and Other Stories
This collection was first published in 1988, and includes stories written across a time span of forty years, since the end of World War II. The collection includes some of Yamamoto’s most-anthologized works, such as “Yoneko’s Earthquake,” “The Legend of Miss Sasagawara,” “The Brown House,” and “Seventeen Syllables,” considered by many to be Yamamoto’s definitive work.
The stories, arranged chronologically by the time of their composition, deal with the experiences of first generation Japanese immigrants (Issei) and their Nisei children. The title is drawn from one of the stories within the collection and refers to the structural requirements of Japanese haiku poetry. Many of the stories have admittedly autobiographical content, making references to the World War II Japanese internment camps, to life in Southern California during the 1940s and ‘50s, and to the experience of being a writer.
Read more about this topic: Hisaye Yamamoto
Famous quotes containing the words seventeen, syllables and/or stories:
“When you are seventeen you aren’t really serious.”
—Arthur Rimbaud (1854–1891)
“This is the poem of the air,
Slowly in silent syllables recorded;
This is the secret of despair,
Long in its cloudy bosom hoarded,
Now whispered and revealed
To wood and field.”
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1809–1882)
“I tell it stories now and then
and feed it images like honey.
I will not speculate today
with poems that think they’re money.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)