Choose two or more of the following books to review. The length of the paper should be 400 to 500 words (or about a page and a half to two pages).

Books for Book Review:

1) Adios to Tears: The Memories of a Japanese-Peruvian Internee in U.S. Concentration Camps. Seiichi Higashide. Seattle: University of Washington Press. 1993. (a copy of the book is on reserve in Milner Library)

2) Sandakan Brothel No. 8: An Episode in the History of Lower-class Japanese Women. Tomoko Yamazaki. New York: M.E. Sharpe. 1998.

3) 1,000 Days in Siberia. Iwao Peter Sano. Lincoln: University of Nebraska. 1999. (a copy of the book is on reserve in Milner Library)

4) Obasan. Joy Kogawa. Anchor. 1994.

**Pay attention to the attached instructions, answer every component 1-8, read the “A sample complete book review” provided to get complete knowledge of how the professor wants the book review*** 

Writing a Book Review ANT 307 A) The book review should be typed (12 point font is preferable) and double-spaced. B) The book review should be around 400-450 words, or two typed pages. C) Note that a “book review” is different from a ‘book report.” The following components are some of the things you might include in a book review: (1) What is the book about? (talk about the theses and arguments of the book). (2) Who is/are the author(s), and what special qualifications do they have to write the book? (3) Discuss the development of the thesis of the book, and give a critical analysis of it. (4) Make a critical, but fair, evaluation of the book, giving reasons for your claims. (5) What are the major strengths of the book? (6) What are the major weaknesses of the book? (7) Describe how the book fits into the scholarly literature; that is, does it break new ground, refute or support previous research, etc.? (8) Who do you recommend to read this book? E) The following is a sample outline and a sample book reviews. A sample book review outline: I. The title of the review, followed by an identification of the work reviewed, as illustrated in the examples below: Japanese Communication: Language and Thought in Context. Senko K. Maynard. Honolulu: University of Hawai’I Press. 1997. xiii + 253 pp. 1 Language, Culture, and Society: An Introduction to Linguistic Anthropology, 6th edition. Zdenek Salzmann, James Stanlaw, and Nobuko Adachi. Boulder: Westview Press. 2014. xiii + 498 pp. II. Your name: Reviewed by Joe Smith III. Opening paragraphs, e,g,: This book presents … / In this work, … IV. Middle/discussion paragraphs, e.g.: Clark claims … / Jones tells us that … / The approach taken by the book is … Here it seems that Smith … V. Ending/summary paragraphs, e.g.: The book is filled with detailed information about … (strengths) / However, those who are not well versed in this area need to use the book with some care and prudence because … (weakness) / In spite of all these great things, however, the ending does leave us feeling just a little disappointed because … (weakness) / Overall, specialists in … will find much that is new and helpful … (strength) A sample complete book review: Japanese Diasporas: Unsung Pasts, Conflicting Presents, and Uncertain Futures. Edited by Nobuko Adachi. London and New York: Routledge, 2006. Xii + 286 pp. $150 cloth. ISBN 0-415-77035-1. Despite the widespread use of “diaspora” to frame the study of Asian immigrants throughout the world, especially in reference to Chinese overseas1, that term has largely eluded Japanese immigration studies until very recently. Nobuko Adachi, an anthropologist whose own work focuses on the Japanese in South America, signals a new direction in approaching Japanese migration studies by assembling this wide-ranging collection of essays under the rubric “Japanese diasporas.” In so doing, she has broken rank with previous studies on the topic. For example, three recently published seminal studies of Japanese migration to Latin America— the key receiving regionóare entitled The Japanese in Latin America (Daniel M. Masterson. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004), New World, New Lives: Globalization and People of Japanese Descent in the Americas and from Latin America in Japan (Lane Ryo Hirabayashi, Ademi Kijumura-Yano and James A. Hirabayashi, eds. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002), and Encyclopedia of Japanese Descendants in the Americas (Akemi KikumuraYano, ed. Walnut Creek: Altamira Press, 2002). Not only that, Adachi actually maps out a typology of Japanese diasporas, in the plural, in her thought-provoking Introduction: incipient diaspora, displaced diaspora, 2 model or positive minority diaspora, Nikkei diaspora, Okinawan diaspora, long-term and permanent-resident diaspora. One might reasonably wonder if she might have overstretched the concept of diaspora with such fine- tuned differences. This volume is published as part of an important series on “Asian Transformations,” edited by the eminent sinologist, Mark Selden. Asian Americanists in general are probably not in the habit of accessing the titles in this series; indeed, most of the titles are probably too Asiacentered, not sufficiently transnational in scope and approach, to be directly relevant to Asian American Studies. This volume on Japanese diasporas is an exception; its inclusion in the series bodes well for future titles that may seek to further bridge Asian Studies and Asian American Studies. While the Americas occupy a significant space in the volume, with essays covering the Japanese in the national contexts of Canada (Keibo Oiwa) , Brazil (Nobuko Adachi), Peru (Daniel Masterson), and Bolivia (Kozy Ameniya), as well as the United States and Latin America (Gary Ohihiro, Lane Hirabayashi, and Akemi Kikumura-Yano) regionally and comparatively, several essays cover the home base, Japan itself, and the reasons for out-migration from the Meiji (late nineteenth century) through the Second World War. The author, James Stanlaw, estimates that upwards of 1 million left before the war, and another 300,000 since then. (35) Equally important, essays cover Japanese migration to the Phil- ippines and miscegenation with the local people, producing distinctive mestizo nisei (mixed-race second generation) and Nikkeijin (Japanese descended people) problems (Shun Ohno); the return migration of Nikkeijin from Brazil to Japan (Takeyuki Tsuda); Japanese working women in modern Singapore (Leng Leng Thang, Miho Goda, and Elizabeth Maclachlan). For me, the most interesting and enlightening of the essays concern Japa- nese migration as colonization of East Asia, in particular Japan’s agricultural colonists in Manchukuo, Japan’s name for occupied Manchuria as a puppet state (Greg Guelcher), and the subsequent challenges of repatriating them after the war when a defeated Japan lost her empire (Mariko Asano Tamanoi). Some ten thousand “overseas Japanese,” mostly children, were left behind in Manchuria and Northeast China after the war. Forgotten by a demoralized postwar Japan, they were raised by adopted Chinese families as Chinese, in a society that never fully accepted them as Chinese nationals or citizens. Consequently, when belated efforts to repatriate them to Japan began in the 1980s after Japan and China resumed diplomatic relations, they were viewed ironically as “overseas Chinese” by many in the Japanese public who do not view them as kin. Not only do these case studies provide fascinating examples of complex identity formation and transformation under diasporic conditions, they sharply highlight relationships of migrants with state policies and actions, in this case both China and Japan, and remind us once more that diasporas by strict definition exist in tension with host societies and state authorities. Shortly after Adachi published her collection of essays, she has found com- pany in framing Japanese migrants and their descendants as diaspora. In 2007, Brazilianist Jeffrey Lesser published his study of “Japanese Brazilians and the meanings of ethnic militancy” in the postwar era, under the title, A Discontented 3 Diaspora (Duke University Press). I anticipate more titles linking Japanese and diaspora in the foreseeable future. Evelyn Hu-dehart Brown University Note: Journal of Asian American Studies, Volume 12, Number 1, February 2009, pp. 124-126 (Review) 4.