The Samurai's Garden
by Gail Tsukiyama
List Price: $12.95
Pages: 211
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 0312144075
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Gail Tsukiyama is the author of the best-selling novels The Language of Threads,
Women of the Silk, The Samurai's Garden and Night of Many Dreams. Born to a
Chinese mother and a Japanese father, she grew up in San Francisco and now lives in El
Cerrito, California. She earned her bachelor's and master's degrees in English with a
concentration in Creative Writing at San Francisco State University. With an understanding
of her heritage, Tsukiyama explores the sights, sounds and feelings of China and Japan in
her novels.
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Q. How did you start writing?
GT: As a teenager, I wrote mostly poetry. However, I did not start to think about writing as a career until college. I then got my Master's in writing.
Q: Which authors do you love to read?
GT: I like to read writers I can learn from. I often read Louise Erdrich, Michael Dorris, and Kaye Gibbons, to name a few. Recently I have been enjoying Barbara Kingsolver's Poisonwood Bible, Louis De Bemieres' I Correlli's Mandolin, and E. Annie Prouix's The Shipping News.
Q: Has the culture you were raised in shaped your identity?
GT: I'm both Chinese and Japanese, yet born in San Francisco and in many ways as American as apple pie. And yet being raised in the Chinese culture, I still adhere to many of the traditions and superstitions. When Chinese New Year comes along I'm still very careful about not saying any- thing negative, because it sets the mood for the whole year. All these Chinese traditions from my mother's side of the family are within me, and have somehow found expression through my books.
Q: You enjoy traveling. Where have you been?
GT: I have been to England, China, Italy, Germany, Egypt, Israel, India, Singapore, Hong Kong, Greece, Japan, and France. When I was young, I often went with my mother to Hong Kong to visit my grandmother. Recently, I have been going to Europe once or twice a year-whenever I get a chance.
Q: Do your travels influence your writing?
GT: Various landscapes have definitely given me a lot of mate- rial for my writing. In my four novels, I have explored Asia as the background for my narratives. My childhood experiences of visiting Hong Kong play a large factor in my subconscious, and thus, it comes out in my writing. I would like to write a novel set in Europe, as I have been spending more and more time there.
Excerpted from The Samurai's Garden © Copyright 2008 by Gail Tsukiyama. Reprinted with permission by St. Martin's Press. All rights reserved.
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