A Sansei Remembers
For more than three decades, I’ve been a writer/editor at various publications, covering science, technology, and business. Recently, though, I’ve become increasingly restless in my work. As a Sansei, or third-generation Japanese American, I now want to write about my family as a way to honor the memories of my grandparents’ immigration to Hawaii, as well as to preserve the stories of the lives of their many descendants.
Yay, My First Novel!
Published in 2021 by Black Rose Writing, Two Nails, One Love opens in New York City with the narrator—Ethan Taniguchi, a Japanese-American gay man in his early 40s—awaiting the arrival of his mother from Hawaii. The two have been estranged for more than ten years, and the reunion is fraught with past grievances bubbling to the surface. After a fateful ferry ride to the Statue of Liberty, Ethan’s mother reluctantly reveals details of her shattered childhood—her family’s imprisonment in a concentration camp in Arkansas in World War II, followed by a deportation to Japan, where she witnesses the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Ethan’s past is also revealed—painful memories of a forsaken career in music and a delayed coming out at the height of the AIDS epidemic. Eventually, both mother and son come to understand the complex and subtle ways that their lives are intertwined, with the past reverberating powerfully through the present. (Cover art: Jana Brenning.)
About Me
I’ve worked for more than 30 years in the publishing industry. Throughout that time, I’ve been a staff writer/editor at the Harvard Business Review, the MIT Sloan Management Review, Scientific American, and several other magazines. Now, though, I’ve turned my focus to writing fiction. A short story of mine—”Finding the Right Keiko“—was recently published in The Baltimore Review (Winter 2021), and my first novel—Two Nails, One Love—was published in 2021 by Black Rose Writing. I’m stoked to be starting this new chapter in my life!
