Hiromi Goto

Template:Short description Template:Infobox writer Hiromi Goto (born December 31, 1966 Chiba-ken, Japan) is a Japanese-Canadian writer, editor, and instructor of creative writing.

Life

Goto was born in Chiba'ken, Japan in 1966 and immigrated to Canada with her family in 1969.<ref name=indiebound/><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> They lived on the west coast of British Columbia for eight years before moving to Nanton, Alberta, a small town in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains where her father farmed mushrooms. Goto earned her B.A. in English from the University of Calgary in 1989, where she received creative writing instruction from Aritha Van Herk and Fred Wah.<ref name=Pivato>Template:Cite web</ref>

Goto's grandmother told her Japanese stories when she was growing up.<ref name=Pivato/> Her work is also influenced by her father's life stories in Japan. These stories often featured ghosts and folk creatures such as the kappa — a small creature with a frog's body, a turtle's shell and a bowl-shaped head that holds water. Her writing commonly explores the themes of race, gender and cultural experiences, like eating, while moving between the realms of fantasy, horror <ref name="PRISM International">Template:Cite web</ref> and reality.<ref name="Whishaw">Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="Latimer">Template:Cite journal</ref>

Her first novel, Chorus of Mushrooms,<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> was the 1995 recipient of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize Best First Book Canada and Caribbean Region' and the co-winner of the Canada-Japan Book Award. It has been released in Israel, Italy, Germany, and the United Kingdom. In 2001, she was awarded the James Tiptree, Jr. Award<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> and was short-listed for the regional Commonwealth Writer's Prize, Best Book Award, the Sunburst Award and the Spectrum Award.

Chorus of Mushrooms is about three generations of Japanese women in Canada, searching for identity in the midst of alienation and an often-hostile host country. The novel explores these characters' diverse, conflicting perspectives towards assimilation into the majority culture, and through the seamless blending of memory, history, and myth, develops a powerful conversation about what it means to belong. Goto speaks to a diasporic experience, on cultural conflicts held on stages from food to hygiene to language, and to the price paid for denying one's origins.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

Goto has been the Writer-in-Residence for numerous institutions, including Athabasca University (2012-2013),<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> the University of Alberta (2009-2010),<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Simon Fraser University (2008),<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Vancouver Public Library (2007)<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> and Vancouver's Emily Carr University of Art and Design.<ref name=Pivato/> She was the co-Guest of Honor of the 2014 WisCon science fiction convention in Madison, Wisconsin.<ref>"Announcing WisCon 38's Guests of Honor: Hiromi Goto and N.K. Jemisin" A Momentary Taste of WisCon 37 (Elizabeth Stone, ed.) Issue #4 (May 26, 2013), p. 2</ref> where she gave a well-received speech<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> on her experiences as a writer. Goto's graphic novel Shadow Life was selected as the Simon Fraser University Library's One Book One SFU choice in 2022.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Bibliography

• The Skin on Our Tongues. Calgary: Absinthe, 1993. (co-editor)
• Chorus of Mushrooms. Edmonton: NeWest, 1994.
• The Water of Possibility. Regina: Coteau, 2001. Template:ISBN
• The Kappa Child. Red Deer, AB: Red Deer, 2001.
• Hopeful Monsters. Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2004.
• Half World. Puffin Canada, 2009. Template:ISBN
• Darkest Light. Puffin Canada, 2012. Template:ISBN
• Shadow Life. Raincoast, 2021. ISBN 978-1-62672-356-6

Further reading

• De Souza, Lyle: Rooted-transnationalism and the representational function of food in Hiromi Goto's "Chorus of Mushrooms". Contemporary Japan 29 (2), 2017 10.1080/18692729.2017.1351023
• Diana Thiesen: Transkulturalismus in Hiromi Goto's "Chorus of Mushrooms" and Wayson Choy's "The Jade Peony", Thesis for Magister degree, Zentrum für Kanada-Studien ZKS, Universität Trier 2017, Chair Ralf Hertel

External links

• Template:ISFDB name
• Goto at English-Canadian writers, Athabasca University, with links, e.g.Words Like Buckshot: Taking Aim at Notions of Nation in Hiromi Goto's "Chorus of Mushrooms", by Mari Sasano. Published in Open Letter in 1998