Brandon Shimoda, Assistant Professor of Creative Writing, has published a new essay with Literary Hub entitled, “Japanese American Incarceration for Children: Brandon Shimoda on Reading with His Daughter.” While reading children's books together about the concentration camps where Japanese immigrants and Japanese Americans were incarcerated during WWII, Shimoda and his young daughter—descendants of the camps—discover and mourn the place of children in the memory and memorialization of Japanese American history. “I did not grow up with children’s books about Japanese American incarceration," Shimoda notes, "There were not many.” The essay meditates on the dearth of such narratives and the complexity of generational trauma that Shimoda identifies with reading a new generation of responses to Japanese American incarceration written for children: “I cry when stories end. I cry that stories end. I am startled by endings.” The essay is a chapter from Prof. Shimoda's forthcoming book of nonfiction (City Lights, 2024).