Christine Kitano

"Christine Kitano's second poetry collection elicits a sense of hunger-an intense longing for home and an ache for human connection. Channeling both real and imagined immigration experiences of her own family-her grandmothers, who fled Korea and Japan; and her father, a Japanese American who was incarcerated during WWII-Kitano's ambitious poetry speaks for those who have been historically silenced and displaced"--

poems

Sky country

A third-generation Japanese American, Kitano writes with an eerie, clarified composure of her family's struggles--immigration, culture shock, internment--and of her own private struggle to understand them and herself. Her confident, beautifully crafted poems are suggestive of a mature poet at the top of her form; but, amazingly, this is her first book. "Newcomer Christine Kitano writes with purpose and intensity about the disturbing subjects of her youth, her family interned in camps, her unborn twin, her mother's cruelty, her father's death. Throughout it all, the grey, almost invisible child, 'born of everybody's second choice' watches wonders and survives. 'Someone is waiting for me to die,' she writes, 'to crack my bones / open in search of music.' A haunting debut." -Dorianne Laux

Poems

Birds of Paradise

Dennis M. Ogawa

"Who You?" For Japanese Americans of Hawaii, it is all about the Issei. On the journey to find identity they do not walk alone. The Issei walk with them. They will not lose their way. These stories that honor the Issei are shared by George R. Ariyoshi, former Governor of Hawaii; Fujio Matsuda, former President, University of Hawaii; Sparky Matsunaga, late Senator of Hawaii; Masaji Marumoto, late Justice, Supreme Court of Hawaii; Fumiko Kaya, late founder, Goto of Hiroshima Foundation; and Patsy Sumie Saiki, late author and educator.

Who You? Hawaii Issei

Dani Shapiro

Christopher Coake

Sueyeun Juliette Lee

Portland Review's 2018 issue features writing by Molly Brodak, Dani Burlison, Christopher Coake, William Virgil Davis, Susan DeFreitas, Christine Kitano, Sueyeun Juliette Lee, Eugene Lim, Molly Patterson, Anna Joy Springer, Jenny Forrester, Jacob White, an interview with Dani Shapiro, art by Anni Wilson, and work by many other exciting writers.

Christine Kitano

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