Rahna Reiko Rizzuto
Rahna Reiko Rizzuto is the author of the just-released novel Shadow Child, as well as the memoir, Hiroshima in the Morning, and her debut novel, Why She Left Us. Her awards and recognitions include the American Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Finalist, U.S./Japan Creative Artist Fellow, Asian American Book Award Finalist and the Grub Street National Book Prize, among others. She is also the Associate Editor of The NuyorAsian Anthology: Asian American Writings About New York City. Her work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Salon Magazine, The Crab Creek Review, The Huffington Post, Mothers Who Think, Because I Said So, and Topography of War, among others. She is a Hedgebrook alumna and teaches in the Goddard MFA in Creative Writing program.
Updated Auguest 2018
Stories from This Author
Hiroshima through Nisei Eyes
Aug. 6, 2018 • Rahna Reiko Rizzuto
What do we know about Hiroshima? And when and how do we learn it? For me, the answer came from my great aunt, Mary Hamaji, a Nisei peace activist in Berkeley, who went to the bombed-out city with the American Occupation in 1946. As a young woman, Auntie Mary was incarcerated in a camp in Jerome, Arkansas during the war. Once the war was over, she decided she wanted to see the world and signed up to join the Occupation …
Hiroshima: The Lesson We Never Learned
Aug. 6, 2010 • Rahna Reiko Rizzuto
On the 65th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we risk losing the memories of the survivors.I went to Hiroshima in 2001 to interview the hibakusha—literally, the “bomb-affected people.” I made this journey as a Japanese-American woman who had no knowledge of the atomic bombings—no experience of war at all. When I got to Hiroshima in June 2001 and began my interviews, good-hearted people shared their testimonies with me, all beginning with where they were the moment they …
