UW Press Authors in the News

Gordon Hirabayashi famously challenged the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, before embarking on a long and distinguished academic career. His nephew Lane Ryo Hirabayashi, coauthor of A Principled Stand: The Story of Hirabayashi v. United States recently discussed his uncle’s battle–and eventual victory–on CSPAN’s BookTV. You can watch the discussion here.

The Wilderness Act turned fifty this month, but is it still working in Washington state and beyond? James Morton Turner, author of The Promise of Wilderness, examined the current state of wilderness legislation in this The Seattle Times editorial.

Upcoming Conferences

Fall conference season begins this month, with the UW Press acquisitions team traveling to numerous academic meetings across the country. If you’re attending any of these conferences, please be sure to stop by the exhibit hall to say hello and browse through our latest books!

American Society for Ethnohistory
October 8-12
Indianapolis, Indiana

Western History Association
Booth 10 / October 15-18
Newport Beach, California

The Annual Conference on South Asia
Booth 7 / October 16-19
Madison, Wisconsin

American Studies Association
Booth 103 / November 6-9
Los Angeles, California

National Women’s Studies Association
November 13-16
San Juan, Puerto Rico

American Anthropological Association
Booth 212 / December 3-7
Washington, D.C.

New Books

Great Bear Wild: Dispatches from a Northern Rainforest
By Ian McAllister, forward by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

The Great Bear Rainforest is the fabled region that stretches up the rugged Pacific coast from the top of Vancouver Island to southern Alaska. A longtime resident of the area, award-winning photographer and conservationist Ian McAllister takes us on a deeply personal journey from the headwaters of the Great Bear Rainforest’s unexplored river valleys down to where the ocean meets the rainforest and finally to the hidden depths of the offshore world.

Along the way, we meet the spectacular wildlife that inhabits the Great Bear Rainforest – in a not-so-unusual week, McAllister quietly observes twenty-seven bears fishing for salmon, three of which are the famed pure white “spirit” bears, Kermodes. McAllister introduces us to the First Nations people who have lived there for millennia and have become his close friends and allies, and to the scientists conducting groundbreaking research and racing against time to protect the rainforest from massive energy projects.

Rich with full-color photographs of the wolves, whales, and other creatures who make the rainforest their home, Great Bear Wild is a stunning celebration of this legendary area.

Roots and Reflections: South Asians in the Pacific Northwest
By Amy P. Bhatt and Nalini Iyer, forward by Deepa Banerjee
New in paperback

Immigrants from South Asia first began settling in Washington and Oregon in the nineteenth century, but because of restrictions placed on Asian immigration to the United States in the early twentieth century, the vast majority have come to the region since World War II.

Roots and Reflections uses oral history to show how South Asian immigrant experiences were shaped by the region and how they differed over time and across generations. It includes the stories of immigrants from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka who arrived from the end of World War II through the 1980s.

Roger Shimomura: An American Knockoff
By Anne Goodyear and Chris Bruce
Distributed for Washington State University Museum of Art

For four decades, Roger Shimomura’s paintings, prints, and theatre pieces have addressed sociopolitical issues of Asian America. He does this through a style that combines his childhood interest in comic books, American Pop Art, and traditions of Japanese woodblock prints, thereby evoking his Japanese ancestry while locating him firmly within modern American artistic developments.

Through this artistic device, he is able to bring together a wild mixture of compositions that offer up patterns of criticism within visually compelling works of sumptuous color and lighthearted Pop directness. In his recent work, under the banner, An American Knockoff (2009 to the present), Shimomura has taken on the long tradition of self-portraiture through the radical lens of cultural conflict. Two thematic directions – assimilation and resistance – are often fused together as the artist inserts himself as an aging Asian Everyman in various guises and situations, both funny and poignant.

Going Down to the Sea: Chinese Sex Workers Abroad
By Ko-lin Chin
Distributed for Silkworm Books

In this book, eighteen Chinese women tell how they came to sell sex in Hong Kong, Macau, Taipei, Bangkok, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, Los Angeles, and New York.

The women’s candid stories put a human face on issues of globalized commercial sex and provide a raw, inside view of the money-driven transnational sex industry.

The author, an expert in the field of criminal justice, frames their personal accounts with contextual details and incisive commentary to provide a rich understanding of the realities and myths of prostitution and global sex trafficking. While the interviews were gathered as part of an extensive research project for the author’s 2012 book, Selling Sex Overseas, the full accounts are published here for the first time. The women describe, in their own words, what motivated them to leave China to work in the sex trade abroad, how much they earn, what hardships they face, and what they hope for in the future.

Upcoming Events

Jeffrey Karl Ochsner with Feliks Banel, Shaping Seattle Architecture: A Historical Guide to the Architects, Second Edition, September 29, Town Hall Seattle,  7:30 p.m.

Joshua Howe, Behind the Curve: Science and the Politics of Global Warming, September 29, Oregon Historical Society’s History Pub at McMenamin’s Kennedy School, Portland, 7:00 p.m.

Frances McCue and Mary Randlett, Mary Randlett Portraits, October 14, Town Hall Seattle, 7:30 p.m.

Moon Ho Jung with Dan Berger, The Rising Tide of Color: Race, State Violence, and Radical Movements Across the Pacific, October 15, University Book Store, 7:00 p.m.

Joshua Howe, Behind the Curve: Science and the Politics of Global Warming, October 20, Seattle Public Library, 7:00 p.m.

Ian McAllister, Great Bear Wild: Dispatches from a Northern Rainforest, October 26, Town Hall Seattle, 7:30 p.m.