Google Doodles Honors Japanese American Writer Hisaye Yamamoto

May 4, 2021

Google Doodles recently featured a special doodle of Japanese American journalist and short story author Hisaye Yamamoto to celebrate Asian Pacific American Heritage Month.

About the doodle: The illustration, drawn by artist Alyssa Winans, was published on Tuesday, according to Newsweek.

The doodle features Yamamoto writing as pieces of paper float around her.
Some pages have illustrations of Yamamoto’s characters, while others allude to an internment camp and a nomadic lifestyle.
This doodle is one of the 4,000 Google Doodles that have been created over the years to “celebrate holidays, anniversaries, and the lives of famous artists, pioneers, and scientists.”

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About Yamamoto: The acclaimed writer was one of the first Asian American writers to be given a “post-war national literary recognition,” according to Google.

Yamamoto, the daughter of Japanese immigrants, was born in Redondo Beach, Calif. on August 23, 1921. She was forced to live in a Japanese concentration camp with her family after the start of World War II.
During and after her time at the concentration camp, she wrote for different newspapers about racism and amplifying diverse voices, among other themes.
Yamamoto pursued a full-time career as a writer after her first short story, “The High Heeled Shoes,” was published in 1948. She continued writing about racism, gender, ethnicity and war, eventually receiving the Before Columbus Foundation’s American Book Award for Lifetime Achievement.
She passed away on January 30, 2011, in Los Angeles at the age of 89.

Featured Image via Densho Encyclopedia

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