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Asian Studies Book Services |
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About us contact details Catalogue
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Sumii
Sue (1902–97), author and human rights leader, was best known for her
novel about childhood in a burakumin village, The River with No Bridge (Hashi
no nai kawa). This book, My Life: Living, Loving, and Fighting, is an
interview with Sumii Sue conducted by her daughter, Masuda Reiko, a
reporter and editorialist for the Mainichi Shimbun and a well-known
writer. Masuda speaks to her mother with warmth and humor, and she
succeeds in eliciting details of daily life and personal relationships
that give us a wonderful picture of this courageous woman and her
fighting temperament, her pride in her achievements, and her
self-effacement. My Life is also a fascinating document of social
history, describing the conditions of life in twentieth-century Japan as
Sumii experienced it: the poverty of sharecroppers, the political
movements of the 1920s, the Great Kanto€ Earthquake, and life on the
home front during World War II. The interview was conducted in 1994,
when Sumii was ninety-two years old and starting to work on volume eight
of The River with No Bridge. Published by Center
for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan |
