Finding Home Far From Home: Recent Episodes
Liane Wakabayashi
Goshen Books introduces new and acclaimed memoir writers who have spent decades living far from home. Moderated by Liane Grunberg Wakabayashi, hear native English memoir writers, based in Japan and other countries, as they read from their books, offer tips and inspiration about the memoir-writing process, and answer questions from a worldwide audience about breaking down borders on the road to finding themselves at home – in a challenging, but overall rich and rewarding, new world.
Book promotion begins the day you start to write, and what a joy it can be. In this talk to Writers in Kyoto on February 20th, I describe the miracles that can happen when you see writing as less a solitary activity than a community-building one...
In a quest to fulfill her disabled daughter’s desire to see the world, the author offers a tender and unvarnished look at what it takes for mother and teenage daughter to leave their home in Japan for a painstakingly thought-out week exploring the great sights of Paris by wheelchair. Not that there weren’t surprises along the way. Suzanne reads the first chapter of this award-winning memoir and offers hope and inspiration to anyone who ever wanted to embark on an adventure that others thought to be utterly impossible.
Former Japan bureau chief for European Press Agency (EPA), Everett Kennedy Brown was nearing 60 when he had a spiritual crisis that put him on a powerful trajectory in Japan, the country he’s called home for more than 30 years. In Kyoto Dreamtime, his forthcoming memoir, meet his extraordinary guides and teachers, the women he loved, and the Yamabushi mountain ascetics he followed. In this podcast, Everett reveals his North Carolina family's surprising ties to Japan and how they set the stage for his lifelong fascination with Shinto and Yamabushi ancient traditions, as experienced through the complex Collodion wet-plate photography techniques he's cultivated over decades. Hosted by Liane Wakabayashi, this is the fourth episode in the Goshen Books Meet the Memoir Series: Finding Home Far from Home.
Rebecca Otowa may have lived in the Japanese countryside for 40 years but this gifted artist, author, and gardener remains a deep observer of ordinary life in a country village that has lost all of its shops and much of its younger population since she arrived. Yet Rebecca paints a loving picture of the life that she created from the point of view of her 350 year old beloved family member, the samurai farmhouse she calls home.
In At Home in Japan, Rebecca opens up like never before about her time alone to appraise her life choices. This groundbreaking series of essays looks beyond the possibility of a foreign woman taking up permanent residence in the Shiga countryside, outside of Kyoto, discussing the joys of bon ordori dancing on a midsummer night as well as the challenges of fitting into her mother-in-law's traditional expectations.
In this fascinating interview with presenter Liane Grunberg Wakabayashi, the third podcast in the Goshen Books Meeting the Memoir Series: Finding Home Far From Home, Rebecca offers both wisdom and pragmatism about what she calls the elusive certainty that wherever we go in life, we too can choose to be part of the place we call home.
Liane Grunberg Wakabayashi offers two delightful readings from her memoir, The Wagamama Bride. She offers intimate and humorous glimpses into her thirty-year life in Japan, her first date at the Jewish Community Center of Hiroo, where she brings Ichiro, a Taoist acupuncturist with more questions about her religion than she can answer. This is followed by the double-wedding scenes, a Jewish-y ceremony under a chuppah, and then an Imperial Hotel affair that, except for the kimono, reminds her of too many annual dinners at Columbia Business School.
Award-winning photographer, filmmaker and author takes you behind the scenes to his fascinating world of Japanese rice paddies and drones, searching for the perfect blooming cherry blossom tree, and how he found his corner of paradise on Solo Hill. Reading from Whisper of the Land, and sharing his writing process, the author is interviewed by Goshen Books presenter Liane Wakabayashi in the second episode of the Meet the Memoir Writer series: Coming Home Far From Home.