Lawson Fusao Inada

Lawson Fusao Inada(born May 26, 1938) is aJapanese Americanpoet. He was the fifthpoet laureateof the state ofOregon.

Lawson Fusao Inada
Lawson Inada (left) withFrank Chin,Shawn Wong,andMichael Chanon the set of John Korty's 1976 film,Farewell to Manzanar
Born	May 26, 1938 Fresno, California,United States
Occupation	poet

Early life

Born May 26, 1938, Inada is a third-generationJapanese American(Sansei). His father, Fusaji, worked as a dentist, while his mother, Masako, helped run the family fish market in Fresno's Chinatown.In May 1942, at the age of three years, Inada and his family wereinternedfor the duration ofWorld War IIat camps inFresno,theJerome War Relocation Centerin Arkansas,andGranada War Relocation Centerin Colorado.After the war, the Inadas returned to Fresno and once again ran the fish market, having trusted the business to family friends who operated it on their behalf during their confinement.

Jazz influences

Following the war, Inada became ajazzmusician, abassist,following the work ofMiles Davis,John Coltrane,andBillie Holiday,to whom he would later write tributes in his works.Inada cites jazz and his time in the internment camps as his chief influences as a poet.He studied writing at theFresno State University,theUniversity of Oregon,and theUniversity of Iowa.

Career highlights

Inada's first teaching job was at theUniversity of New Hampshire,from 1962 to 1965. He moved to Oregon and earned an MFA from the University of Oregon in 1966, beginning teaching poetry atSouthern Oregon Universitylater that year.

In 1994, Inada'sLegends from Campwon anAmerican Book Award,and he has received several poetry fellowships from theNational Endowment for the Arts.He also won the 1997Stafford/Hall Award for Poetry.

In 2006 Inada was named Oregon's fifth poet laureate, the first person to fill the position sinceWilliam Staffordin 1990.He was succeeded byPaulann Petersenin 2010.

Select works

• Three Northwest Poets: Drake, Inada, Lawder, Madison:Quixote Press, 1970.
• Before the War; Poems as They Happened,New York: Morrow, 1971.
• Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Asian-American Writers,Washington, DC: Howard University Press, 1974 (Coeditor).
• The Buddha Bandits Down Highway 99,Mountain View: Buddhahead Press, 1978 (With Garrett Kaoru Hongo and Alan Chong Lau).
• The Big Aiiieeeee!: An Anthology of Chinese American and Japanese American Literature,New York: Penguin, 1990 (Coeditor).
• Legends From Camp,Minneapolis: Coffee House Press, 1993. Winner, American Book Award. Finalist, Los Angeles Times Book Award for Poetry.
• In This Great Land of Freedom: The Japanese Pioneers of Oregon,Los Angeles: Japanese American National Museum, 1993 (Contributor).
• Touching the Stones: Tracing One Hundred Years of Japanese American History,Portland: Oregon Nikkei Endowment, 1994 (Contributor).
• Just Intonations,Ashland, Oregon: Graven Images Gallery Press, 1996.
• Drawing the Line,Minneapolis: Coffee House Press, 1997. Winner, Oregon Book Award for Poetry. A New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age.
• Only What We Could Carry: The Japanese American Internment Experience,Berkeley:Heyday Books,2000 (Editor and author of introduction).
• Unfinished Message: Selected Works of Toshio Mori,Berkeley: Heyday Books, 2000 (Author of introduction).
• A Matter of Conscience: Essays on the World War II Heart Mountain Draft Resistance Movement.Powell, Wyoming: Western History Publications, 2002 (Contributor).

See also

• List of Asian American writers
• Japanese American Internment
• Japanese American Historical Plaza,Portland

References

• Leonard, George. (1999).The Asian Pacific American Heritage: A Companion to Literature and Arts.London:Taylor & Francis.ISBN0-8153-2980-6;10_ISBN 978-0-8153-2980-0
• Niiya, Brian. (1993).Japanese American History: An A-to-Z Reference from 1868 to the Present.New York: Facts on File; Bonn: Verlag für die Deutsche Wirtschaft AG.ISBN978-0-8160-2680-7OCLC: 26853950

External links

• Oregon Poet Laureate website
• PBS:"Oregon Laureate Reflects on Japanese Internment,"NewsHour.October 3, 2008.