-
Jan 12, 2025 | 
japansociety.org.uk | Susan Ito
By Susan Kiyo ItoMad Creek Books (2023) ISBN-13: 978-0814258835Review by Shehrazade Zafar-ArifIn this poignantly honest and intimate memoir, Susan Kiyo Ito recounts her journey as the mixed-race adopted child of Japanese-American parents, her journey to track down her birth mother as an adult, and how this affected the trajectory of her life.
-
May 23, 2024 | 
electricliterature.com | Neema Avashia |Susan Ito |Sejal Shah
There’s a common misconception that university presses only publish academic work–monographs or detailed studies of a single specialized subject or other discipline-specific scholarly books. However, university presses, while housed in universities, also publish a broad range of award-winning books for general audiences, including memoirs, essay collections, novels, short story collections, poetry collections, and hybrid, mixed-genre works.
-
Feb 19, 2024 | 
fivebooks.com | Susan Ito |David Mas Masumoto |Ahmed Naji |Katharine Halls
Thanks for joining us. We love featuring the National Book Critics Circle shortlists; they always surface excellent books we might otherwise have missed. What were you looking for when you were drawing up the 2024 NBCC shortlist of the best recent memoirs? All the books that made the shortlist were works that the committee members felt fundamentally changed how we viewed the world, whether an aspect of history or how to view the present.
-
Feb 15, 2024 | 
muthamagazine.com | Susan Ito
Susan Kiyo Ito is the author of the memoir I Would Meet You Anywhere (Ohio State University Press), about her search for her birth mother, their reunion, and their disunion. To read a Q&A with Ito, go here. For years after my fragile sixteen-year relationship with my birth mother dissolved, I carried my despair inside. I managed to get through the chores of life—child raising, teaching, errands—but I was broken inside. Then one day, I saw a notice for Japanese taiko drumming.
-
Dec 1, 2023 | 
nobhillgazette.com | Susan Ito
The COVID-19 virus showed up just as our first grandchild was due to be born. This invisible, deadly threat was spreading across the country. Bottles of hand sanitizer, boxes of gloves and surgical masks, paper towels, and rubbing alcohol piled up on the kitchen counter, and our jobs abruptly transitioned to staring at our computer screens. The five of us — my husband, two adult children and our son-in-law — plus three dogs, hunkered down together.
-
Nov 29, 2023 | 
romper.com | Susan Ito
When I found myself unexpectedly pregnant as a young adult, there was one person I wanted to tell: my birth mother. I had searched for and found her when I was in college, and I felt she would empathize with my situation. I was afraid to tell my conservative Japanese American adoptive parents. They had met in church, and my adoptive mother had not dated until well into adulthood.
-
Nov 10, 2023 | 
therumpus.net | Susan Ito
I was an adopted only child who taught myself to read at the age of three. Books were my world, my companions and my solace. I gravitated towards stories of orphans and foundlings, of characters who were displaced and lost and seeking home. I felt loved and cared for in my family, but there was an infinite knot of restless questions inside me. I was transfixed by the picture books Are You My Mother?
-
Nov 6, 2023 | 
guernicamag.com | Susan Ito
Susan Kiyo Ito has been torn for most of her life between telling and not telling her story. “Since the start of my life, I have been a secret, my existence a wild inconvenience,” she writes in her memoir, I Would Meet You Anywhere. One might say the same about the circumstances of her birth, interlocked with the dark chapter of internment of Japanese Americans in the US during World War II.
-
Nov 4, 2023 | 
audible.com | Susan Ito |Maggie Smith |Trevor Noah |Stephanie Foo
A Memoir (Machete) Narrated by: Kathleen Li Length: 8 hrs and 12 mins 5.0 out of 5 stars 5.0 (4 ratings) Please try again later Please try again later Please try again later Please try again Please try again Please try again Prime members: New to Audible? Get 2 free audiobooks during trial. Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection. Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts. Access exclusive sales and deals. Premium Plus auto-renews for...
-
Nov 1, 2023 | 
datebook.sfchronicle.com | Susan Ito |Michelle Kicherer
Author Susan Kiyo Ito at her home in Oakland. Her memoir, “I Would Meet You Anywhere,” publishes Saturday, Nov. 4. Photo: Jessica Christian/The ChronicleA half-Japanese girl braces herself to knock on a hotel room door. Though in her 20s, she knows that she looks much younger. She also knows — as some people have made her painfully aware — that she doesn’t look “full Japanese.” What is her other half? Who is her father? Who is she?
