The University of Washington Press is proud to co-present events at the Seattle Public Library this fall to celebrate the centennial of the birth of John Okada, author of the seminal Japanese American novel, No-No Boy.

Okada biographer and Seattle Public Library guest curator Frank Abe has arranged a three-part series that will explore Okada’s life, place, and work. Abe is the co-editor with Greg Robinson and Floyd Cheung of John Okada: The Life and Rediscovered Work of the Author of No-No Boy, a 2019 American Book Award winner.

“No-No Boy is the great Japanese American novel, one that captures the dislocation of a people returning to Seattle from four years of wartime incarceration,” notes Abe in the Seattle Public Library press release. “In its raw emotion and anger, it was far ahead of its time.”

“It’s also a great novel of Seattle, with passages evoking the buildings and alleyways of Chinatown that still exist today,” says Abe. “Okada once worked at the old Central Library, so it’s fitting the Library as an institution that promotes reading and community should recognize the 100th anniversary of his birth with a reconsideration of his life and legacy.”

Okada was born at the Merchants Hotel in Pioneer Square on September 22, 1923. He attended Broadway High School and the University of Washington before his wartime incarceration in concentration camps in Puyallup and Minidoka, Idaho. He volunteered for the Military Intelligence Service and served as a translator in Guam, after which he earned a degree in library sciences and worked for a time in the Business Department of The Seattle Public Library. No-No Boy, his only novel, was published in 1957 and has been embraced by generations of students and readers. Okada died of a heart attack at the age of 47.

John Okada Centennial Programs

Co-presented by the North American Post, The Seattle Public Library Foundation, the Gary and Connie Kunis Foundation, and The Seattle Times.

All events are free and open to the public. Find more details and information about each program at spl.org/calendar.

• The John Okada Centennial: A celebration of his life and work. Tuesday, September 26, 7:00 pm at the Central Library. To kick off the series, Frank Abe will present still-unseen images and stories of Okada’s life, and novelist Shawn Wong will share how he and his friends rediscovered and republished No-No Boy along with the story of Okada’s unfinished second novel. Karen Maeda Allman, literary agent and former Elliott Bay Book Company bookseller, will moderate.

• From Page to Stage: Adapting John Okada’s No-No Boy for today’s theater. Tuesday, October 24, 7:00 pm at the Central Library. Co-presented by Seattle Rep. Frank Abe shares scenes from a new stage adaptation of No-No Boy that he’s currently developing and engages in a conversation with Seattle Rep Literary Manager and Dramaturg Paul Adolphsen on the challenges of bringing a novel published in 1957 to life for today’s theater audience. They will be joined by actors who will read scenes from the new adaptation and discuss them with the panelists.

• The Postwar Seattle Chinatown of John Okada. Sunday, November 19, 2:00 pm at the Central Library. The sense of place in postwar Seattle Chinatown is strong in No-No Boy, and this final panel will examine the legacy of Japanese-owned hotels with family historian Shox Tokita, whose mother owned three; stories of Filipino residents and workers in Chinatown from former Seattle City Councilmember Dolores Sibonga, whose mother owned the Estigoy Café; and Dr. Marie Rose Wong, author of Building Tradition: Pan-Asian Seattle and Life in the Residential Hotels, who will discuss the history of single-room occupancy residential hotels in Chinatown and the threats they now face. The panel will be moderated by Emily Porcincula Lawsin, 4Culture Historic Preservation Program Manager.

About Frank Abe

Abe is co-editor of a new anthology, The Literature of Japanese American Incarceration, coming May 2024 from Penguin Classics, and lead author of the graphic novel, We Hereby Refuse: Japanese American Resistance to Wartime Incarceration (Chin Music Press), a finalist in Creative Nonfiction for the Washington State Book Award. He wrote and directed the award-winning PBS documentary “Conscience and the Constitution,” and won an American Book Award as co-editor with Greg Robinson and Floyd Cheung of John Okada: The Life & Rediscovered Work of the Author of ‘No-No Boy’ (University of Washington Press), authoring the first-ever biography of Okada. He studied in the Advanced Training Program of the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, and has worked for KIRO Newsradio, the King County Executive, and the King County Council.