{"id":8245,"date":"2017-07-24T18:08:15","date_gmt":"2017-07-24T22:08:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/library.ryerson.ca\/asianheritage\/?page_id=8245"},"modified":"2025-11-07T17:04:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-07T22:04:07","slug":"leslie-shimotakahara","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/library.torontomu.ca\/asianheritage\/authors\/leslie-shimotakahara\/","title":{"rendered":"Leslie Shimotakahara"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Leslie Shimotakaha earned a PhD in English from Brown University. She had a brief career as a university English teacher before turning her attention to creative prose and fiction writing. She currently lives in Toronto.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Fiction<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

After the Bloom<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Toronto: Dundurn, 2017.
PS8637 .H525 A69 2017<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Publisher’s Synopsis (from its website)<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Lily Takemitsu goes missing from her home in Toronto one luminous summer morning in the mid-1980s. Her daughter, Rita, knows her mother has a history of dissociation and memory problems, which have led her to wander off before. But never has she stayed away so long. Unconvinced the police are taking the case seriously, Rita begins to carry out her own investigation. In the course of searching for her mom, she is forced to confront a labyrinth of secrets surrounding the family\u2019s internment at a camp in the California desert during the Second World War, their postwar immigration to Toronto, and the father she has never known.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Fiction<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The Breakwater<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Toronto: Cormorant Books, 2026.
Forthcoming March 2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Publisher’s Synopsis (From its website)<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

One morning in Toronto, Cathy Matsumoto\u2019s father, Yasuo, calls to announce he intends to visit a dying cousin in British Columbia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cathy\u2019s never heard of this mysterious relative before, but she begrudgingly agrees to plan a family trip with her father and daughter, Tessa, to Victoria, the hometown Yas was forcibly evicted from when Japanese Canadians were interned during World War Two. It’s only in BC that Cathy learns this \u201ccousin\u201d is actually Yas\u2019s younger brother, Stum, who\u2019s been languishing in psychiatric care, abandoned, ever since Yas committed him to Essondale Asylum before the war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yas tries to fend off probing questions from his daughter and granddaughter, but revisiting old haunts brings back memories of the brothers\u2019 boyhood rivalry and coming-of-age near Victoria\u2019s Chinatown, when Yas\u2019s resolve to hold their fractured family together clashed against Stum\u2019s troublesome turn toward a life of gambling, crime, and consorting with prostitutes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this heartbreaking family story, two brothers, both old men not far from death, must at last confront long-buried family secrets \u2014 and their lingering effects on subsequent generations.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Fiction<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Red Oblivion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Toronto: Dundurn, 2019.
PS8637.H525 R43 2019<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Publisher’s Synopsis (from its website)<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

When Jill Lau receives an early morning phone call that her elderly father has fallen gravely ill, she and her sister, Celeste, catch the first flight from Toronto to Hong Kong. The man they find languishing in the hospital is a barely recognizable shadow of his old, indomitable self.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to his housekeeper, a couple of mysterious photographs arrived anonymously in the mail in the days before his collapse. These pictures are only the first link in a chain of events that begin to reveal the truth about their father\u2019s past and how he managed to escape from Guangzhou, China, during the Cultural Revolution to make a new life for himself in Hong Kong. Someone from the old days has returned to haunt him \u2014 exposing the terrible things he did to survive and flee one of the most violent periods of Chinese history, reinvent himself, and make the family fortune. Can Jill piece together the story of her family\u2019s past without sacrificing her father’s love and reputation?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Fiction<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Sisters of the Spruce<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

BC: Caitlin Press, 2024.
PS8637.H525 S57 2024<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Publisher’s Synopsis (From its website)<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

World War One is in high gear. Fourteen-year-old Khya Terada moves with her family to a remote, misty inlet on Haida Gwaii, then the Queen Charlotte Islands, in northern British Columbia, known for its Sitka spruces. The Canadian government has passed an act to expedite logging of these majestic trees, desperately needed for the Allies\u2019 aircrafts in Europe. At a camp on the inlet, Khya\u2019s father, Sannosuke\u2014a talented, daring logger with twenty years of experience since immigrating from Japan\u2014assumes a position of leadership among the Japanese and Chinese workers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the arrival of a group of white loggers, eager to assert their authority, throws off balance the precarious life that Khya and her family have begun to establish. When a quarrel between Sannosuke and a white man known as \u201cthe Captain\u201d escalates, leading to the betrayal of her older sister, Izzy, and humiliation for the family, Khya embarks on a perilous journey with her one friend\u2014a half-Chinese sex worker, on the lam for her own reasons\u2014to track down the man and force him to take responsibility. Yet nothing in the forest is as it appears. Can they save Izzy from ruination and find justice without condemning her to a life of danger, or exposing themselves to the violence of an angry, power-hungry man?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Drawing on inspiration from her ancestors\u2019 stories and experiences, Shimotakahara weaves an entrancing tale of female adventure, friendship, and survival.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Non-fiction (Autobiography\/Memoir)<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The Reading List: Literature, Love and Back Again<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Willowdale, Ont.: Stories That Bind, 2011.
PS8637 .H525 Z47 2011<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Publisher’s Synopsis<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Awards and Honours<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

2012 Canada-Japan Literary Prize–Memoir (winner)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Anthology<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Changing the Face of Canadian Literature<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Shimotakahara, Leslie. “The Breakwater.” In Changing the Face of Canadian Literature<\/em>, edited by Dane Swan. Toronto: Guernica Editions, 2020.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Links<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Leslie Shimotakahara personal website<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Publisher Caitlin Press<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Publisher Dundurn Press<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Leslie Shimotakaha earned a PhD in English from Brown University. She had a brief career as a university English teacher before turning her attention to creative prose and fiction writing. She currently lives in Toronto. Fiction After the Bloom Toronto: … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"parent":16,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-8245","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.torontomu.ca\/asianheritage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.torontomu.ca\/asianheritage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.torontomu.ca\/asianheritage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.torontomu.ca\/asianheritage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.torontomu.ca\/asianheritage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8245"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/library.torontomu.ca\/asianheritage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8245\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20838,"href":"https:\/\/library.torontomu.ca\/asianheritage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8245\/revisions\/20838"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.torontomu.ca\/asianheritage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/16"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.torontomu.ca\/asianheritage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}