Author Diana Morita Cole to appear at Four Rivers Cultural Center for a book reading on July 10 at 5:30 PM

Please join us for a night of interesting reading, a film excerpt, and dialogue.  The Four Rivers Cultural Center has invited Diana Cole, the author of Sideways: Memoir of a Misfit to share her personal story.  The reading will be from 5:30 – 7:30 on Monday, 10 July at the Four Rivers Cultural Center.   Diana will do a reading from the book, which features the life of a young Nikkei protagonist, who is born in an Idaho internment camp.  The memoir presents the struggles of a child to overcome the stigma of being a member of a despised group and features the lives of important cultural icons, William Hohri, who led a massive class action lawsuit against the United States, Iva Toguri, who was convicted of treason and subsequently pardoned, Roy Miki, who was born in exile in Manitoba, and Murakami’s of Salt Spring Island.

The first chapter of Sideways was published in The New Orphic Review, spring issue 2014. It was shortlisted in the Open-Season Competition of The Malahat Review creative non-fiction category for 2013. It was also nominated for the Pushcart Prize Anthology for 2015. This chapter is included in the required reading list for the Japanese American lecture series at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. The publication of Sideways: Memoir of a Misfit is funded by the Columbia Basin Trust and the Columbia Kootenay Cultural Alliance.

Along with a focus on the book, Diana will screen 8 minutes of a film called Hidden Internment, the documentary that exposes the kidnapping, smuggling, and imprisonment of Japanese Latin Americans during World War II. Art Shibayama, who was born in Lima, was imprisoned, along with his parents and five siblings, in Crystal City, Texas. Despite his illegal incarceration, Art was denied the redress that had been provided to Japanese Americans and Japanese Canadians. After almost three decades of struggle, he is still fighting for reparations and a full disclosure of the extraordinary rendition and human rights violations he and his family endured.

These are little-known stories of experiences of Japanese internment during World War ii.

Please join us for a fascinating opportunity to learn about this author’s struggles here in America and the treatment of Latin American Japanese during World War II

“Sideways: Memoir of a Misfit acquaints us with what is uncomfortable in history, how people suffer and find resilience. This is a book full of fascinating personal insights.”

— Ernest Hekkanen, Editor-in-Chief,

The New Orphic Review