| I
Hotel
Novel by Karen Tei Yamashita
Art
by Leland Wong and Sina Grace
Paul Yamazaki, City Lights Booksellers:
“I Hotel is
an amazing literary accomplishment and one of the
most pleasurable reading experiences I have ever
had. I believe it stands on the same plane of accomplishment
as Roberto Bolaño's Savage
Detectives and Edward P. Jones's The Known
World —an amazing literary accomplishment and
a brave and bold act of publishing.” Jessica Hagedorn:
“I Hotel is
an explosive site, a profound metaphor and jazzy,
epic novel rolled into one. Karen Tei Yamashita chronicles
the colliding arts and social movements in the Bay
Area of the wayward '70s with fierce intelligence,
humor and empathy.”
Shawn Wong:
“If
you were there in 1970s San Francisco, then this
book is about you. At some point in reading I Hotel,
I lost all objectivity. I wept, I laughed, I read silently
while moving my lips. And I read the last twelve pages
again and again as if an ancestor had written them.”
This dazzling, multi-voiced fusion of fiction, playwriting,
graphic art, and philosophy spins an epic tale of America's
struggle for civil rights as it played out in San Francisco.
Divided into ten novellas, one for each year, I
Hotel begins in 1968, when Martin Luther King
and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated, students took
to the streets, the Vietnam War raged, and cities burned.
As
Yamashita's motley cast of students, laborers, artists,
revolutionaries, and provocateurs make their way
through the history of the day, they become caught
in a riptide of politics and passion, clashing ideologies,
and personal turmoil. And by the time the survivors
unite to save the International Hotel—epicenter of
the Yellow Power Movement—their stories have come to
define the very heart of the American experience.
Also
by this author:
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