Oct 8
Karen Tei Yamashita '73 - Boat & Rainbow: Revisiting Through the Arc of the Rain Forest
A look back at her first novel, Through the Arc of the Rain Forest (1990), as a flashpoint for thinking about real-time threats of climate change and planetary self-destruction. Karen Tei Yamashita '73 will reflect on her storytelling over the past three decades as a speculative, literary, and creative journey.
Yamashita is the author of nine books, including I Hotel, finalist for the National Book Award and recently included in The Atlantic Monthly’s list of “Great American Novels Since 1920,” Brazil-Maru, Tropic of Orange, Letters to Memory, and Sansei and Sensibility, all published by Coffee House Press. In 2024, Yamashita was named a new member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters from the National Book Foundation, the John Dos Passos Prize for Literature, a U.S. Artists’ Ford Foundation Fellowship, and a Watson Fellowship to São Paolo to research the history of Japanese immigration to Brazil, Yamashita is professor emerita of literature and creative writing at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Sponsored by the Light Lectureship in the Arts
Co-sponsored by Arts@Carleton, English, and American Studies