Rahman, Shazia. “Orientalism, Deconstruction, and
Relationality: Sara Suleri’s Meatless Days,” Litera-
ture Interpretation Theory 15 (2004): 347–362.
Andrea Opitz
Suyemoto, Toyo (1916–2003)
Born in Orville, California, to Japanese immigrant
parents Mitsu Hyakusoku and Tsutomu Howard
Suyemoto, Toyo was the first born of 11 children.
When she reached college age, the family moved to
Berkeley, where Toyo graduated with a bachelor’s
degree in English from the University of Califor-
nia. From 1942 to 1945 Toyo and her family, like
most West Coast Japanese Americans, were forced
to relocate to internment camps. First, they were
interned at the Tanforan Race Track in California
and later at the Topaz Relocation Camp in Utah.
During the internment, Toyo and other college
graduates set up a high school for the children of
the camp, where she taught English and Latin. It
was also at the Topaz camp in Utah that she first
began to work as a librarian. After being released
in 1945, Toyo worked at the Cincinnati Museum
and later at the University of Cincinnati as a refer-
ence librarian. After the death of her son Kay at 16,
Toyo earned an M.S. in Library Science from the
University of Michigan. Between 1958 and 1987,
she worked at the Ohio State University librar-
ies. Toyo donated her writings and journals to the
Suyemoto collection at the Ohio State University
library. In the documentary film, Life of Toyo Suy-
emoto Kawakami, produced by Keith Kilty, Toyo
Suyemoto discussed the difficulties she faced dur-
ing internment, providing many examples of the
racism she encountered as a Japanese American
during World War II. Toyo died in her home in
Columbus, Ohio, on December 30, 2003, at the
age of 87.
Throughout her life, Toyo has been writing po-
etry using her maiden name, Toyo Suyemoto. Prior
to World War II, she published poems in various
Japanese-American newspapers on the West Coast.
During internment, she belonged to the group of
writers and artists who published the camp jour-
nals, Tr ek and All Aboard. After the war, her poetry
appeared in a number of journals and anthologies
including the Yale Review and Amerasia Journal.
The central theme common to all of Suyemo-
to’s works is the sense of loss. For Suyemoto, this
sense is twofold. On the one hand, it refers to the
“loss” of her identity—and her attempt to find her
own unique voice as a second-generation Asian
American. On the other hand, it refers to the “loss”
of her sense of belonging, which resulted from her
family being removed from its home and from one
internment camp to another.
Suyemoto’s best-known poems include “In
Topaz,” which was originally published in the
camp journal Tr ek in the Topaz (Utah) internment
camp in 1943, and “Camp Memories,” which was
composed in 1978. Juliana Chang, author of Quiet
Fire: A Historical Anthology of Asian American Po-
etry, 1892–1970, describes Suyemoto’s poems as
“works of subtle beauty, which become powerfully
poignant when the reader considers their place of
authorship: a barren internment camp in the West
where she and other Japanese-Americans were
confined.” Chang says Suyemoto’s poems can be
read as “metaphors for a barren lifestyle and hope
for a fruitful spring” or as “allusions to Japanese-
American agrarianism and its attempts to trans-
form desert wastelands in the internment camps.”Bibliography
Chang, Juliana, ed. Quiet Fire: A Historical Anthology
of Asian American Poetry, 1892–1970. New York:
Asian American Writers’ Workshop, 1996.
Monika DixSze, Arthur (1950– )
When he performs his work, Sze allows his hand
to quietly measure out the rhythms and silences
that shape his poetry. His poetry comes alive not
in complex symbols that must be researched but in
multivoiced dialogues and reflective silences that
must be experienced.
Born in New York City, Sze is a second-gen-
eration Chinese American who early on saw po-
etry and science as complements to each other.
As a young student at MIT, he soon found thatSze, Arthur 275