Brazil-Maru : a novel

By - Yamashita, Karen Tei, , Straight, Susan

Floor - Floor 3

Published - Coffee House Press, Minneapolis, 1992

ISBN 10 - 1566890160

ISBN 13 - 9781566890168

Book Status - 3 Qnty Available with us.

Subject - Historical fiction

Shelf No - 6

Call Number - 813.54 YAM

Physical Description - 248 pages ; 23 cm

Book Information

When the United States closed its doors to Japanese immigrants, hundreds of thousands of them made their way to the coffee plantations and the then-open spaces of Brazil. In this engrossing multigenerational novel, award-winning author Karen Tei Yamashita tells the story of one idealistic band of these immigrants, who arrive in 1925 on a ship named the Brazil-Maru and set out to carve a utopia out of the jungle. Led by the charismatic Kantaro Uno, the pioneers create a civilization built around his passions for baseball, painting, chickens, and their own socialist sentiments. They endure struggles in clearing the land, maintaining their identity, adapting to a new world, and fighting the backlash caused by World War II. Inevitably, however, the turbulent course Kantaro has set leads the community called Esperanca in a direction no one could have predicted. Told through the eyes of five characters covering three generations of Esperanca's history, Brazil-Maru explores themes that resonate with the reality of all immigrant history: the dream of creating a new world, the cost of idealism, the symbiotic tie between a people and the land they settle, and the changes demanded by the appearance of a new generation.

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