In this conversation between author Karen Tei Yamashita and writer/community organizer Erica Hiroko Isomura, lessons and stories from I Hotel (Coffee House press, 2010) are discussed through the context of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, a neighbourhood in which low-income, racialized, and stigmatized residents struggle for justice everyday. In a society increasingly divided by race, class, and beyond, what lessons can we take away from Yamashita’s work?
The conversation and reading will be followed with a dialogue featuring members from SRO Collaborative and Right to Remain, and will be open to questions from the audience.
Karen Tei Yamashita is the author of seven books, including I Hotel, finalist for the National Book Award, and most recently, Letters to Memory, all published by Coffee House Press. Recipient of the John Dos Passos Prize for Literature and a US Artists Ford Foundation Fellowship, she is Professor Emerita of Literature and Creative Writing at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
