Karen Tei Yamashita
Karen Tei Yamashita was awarded the 2021 Medal for Outstanding Contribution to American Literature by the National Book Foundation on November 17.
Yamashita is the 34th winner of the award since its inception in 1988. Past winners include Joan Toni Morrison, Maxine Hong Kingston and Stephen King.
In her acceptance speech, Yamashita stated that the award is particularly important for her community, given that she has been plagued by anti-Asian violence and hatred in the past year.
“Asian American literature is essentially a political and resistance literature,” Yamashita said.
Yamashita has written eight books, including a short story about becoming a Japanese American “Three Lives and Sensibility” and “Across the Arc of the Rainforest”, and a novel about Japanese expats living in Brazil in an environmental crisis.
