Research by Subject: Reflecting on Ruth Asawa and the Garden of Remembrance: Home

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Ruth Asawa by Kim Conaty (Editor); Edouard Kopp (Editor); Aleesa Pitcharmarn Alexander (Contribution by); Jordan Troeller (Contribution by); Scout Hutchinson (Contribution by); Kirsten Marples (Contribution by); Isabella Bird (Contribution by)
ISBN: 9780300273281
Publication Date: 2023-09-12
A groundbreaking examination of how the act of drawing was a vital component of Ruth Asawa's multifaceted art. Ruth Asawa (1926-2013), widely known for her looped-wire sculptures, was an inveterate drawer. She filled sketchbook after sketchbook and even stated that drawing was central to her sculpture.
Everything She Touched by Marilyn Chase
ISBN: 9781452174402
Publication Date: 2020-04-07
Everything She Touched recounts the incredible life of the American sculptor Ruth Asawa. This is the story of a woman who wielded imagination and hope in the face of intolerance and who transformed everything she touched into art. In this compelling biography, author Marilyn Chase brings Asawa's story to vivid life. She draws on Asawa's extensive archives and weaves together many voices--family, friends, teachers, and critics--to offer a complex and fascinating portrait of the artist.
Ruth Asawa : a retrospective view ; [exhibition] organized by the San Francisco Museum of Art, June 29 - August 19, 1973.
Publication Date: 1973
Please Wait by the Coatroom by John Yau
ISBN: 9781574232615
Publication Date: 2023-06-27
Far-ranging and thought-provoking essays on the relation of art and ethnic identity. This first collection by award-winning author John Yau, drawn from decades of work, includes essays about Black, Asian, Latinx, and Native American artists: sculptors Luis Jimenez and Ruth Asawa; "second generation Abstract Expressionists" such as the Black painter Ed Clark and the Japanese American painter Matsumi Kanemitsu; the performance artists James Luna and Patty Chang; the photographers Laurel Nakadate and Teju Cole; and a generation of Asian American artists that has emerged during the last decade.
The World Atlas of Public Art by Andrew Wasserman
ISBN: 0300272588
Publication Date: 2024-08-27
The book charts a global survey of works and practices from the past six decades featuring more than 125 significant permanent and temporary public artworks by leading contemporary artists, including Ruth Asawa, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Olafur Eliasson, Yayoi Kusama, Simone Leigh, and OSGEMEOS.
Encyclopedia of Asian American Artists by Kara Kelley Hallmark
ISBN: 9780313334511
Publication Date: 2007-05-30
Painters, photographers, sculptors, and installation artists are among the seventy-five artists represented in this guide to Asian American artists. Within each entry, Kara Hallmark describes the artists' early life, education and training, and impact on the art world both in their country of heritage as well as the U.S.
Joinery, Joists and Gender by Deirdre Visser
ISBN: 9780367363406
Publication Date: 2022-03-16
* Contains beautifully illustrated profiles with fourteen important women and gender non-conforming makers, including Wendy Maruyama and Gail Fredell, Yuri Kobayashi and Sarah Marriage * It explores the history of the Arts and Craft movement, developing communities and mentorship, discrimination, social justice, and pedagogy * Includes 200 full colour images * Written for craft practitioners and students, this book is an accessible and insightful entry into the lives and practices of women in woodworking.
In the Company of Women by Grace Bonney (Editor)
ISBN: 9781579655976
Publication Date: 2016-10-04
Over 100 exceptional and influential women describe how they embraced their creative spirit, overcame adversity, and sparked a global movement of entrepreneurship. Media titans and ceramicists, hoteliers and tattoo artists, comedians and architects--taken together, these profiles paint a beautiful picture of what happens when we pursue our passions and dreams.
Contemporary Textiles by Nadine Monem
ISBN: 9781906155292
Publication Date: 2008-05-27
A comprehensive look at emerging artists from one of the most exciting mediums in the fine art world today, that profiles some of the most daring and innovative examples of textiles in fine art.
The Forbidden Stitch by Shirley Geok-lin Lim (Editor); Mayumi Tsutakawa (Editor)
ISBN: 9780934971102
Publication Date: 1993-07-01
"Asian American women writers step out of the shadows of anonymity...to reveal often stunning radiance."- Seattle Times Winner of the American Book Award This first Asian American women's anthology explores the multiplicity of experiences and concerns Asian American women face. Includes work by over eighty contributors and an extensive bibliography.
Lost and Found by Karen L. Ishizuka; John Kuo Wei Tchen (Foreword by); Roger Daniels (Foreword by)
ISBN: 9780252031304
Publication Date: 2006-09-14
Combining heartfelt stories with first-rate scholarship, Lost and Found reveals the complexities of a people reclaiming their own history. For decades, victims of the United States' mass incarceration of Americans of Japanese descent during World War II were kept from understanding their experience by governmental coverups, euphemisms, and societal silence.
Seen and Unseen by Lauren Tamaki (Illustrator); Elizabeth Partridge
ISBN: 9781452165103
Publication Date: 2022-10-25
This important work of nonfiction features powerful images of the Japanese American incarceration captured by three photographers--Dorothea Lange, Toyo Miyatake, and Ansel Adams--along with firsthand accounts of this grave moment in history. Three months after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered the incarceration of all Japanese and Japanese Americans living on the West Coast of the United States.
Not White Enough by Lawrence Goldstone
ISBN: 9780700634262
Publication Date: 2023-06-01
Lawrence Goldstone's Not White Enough is a comprehensive examination of a century of bigotry against Chinese and Japanese Americans that culminated in the infamous Supreme Court decision Korematsu v. United States: the landmark ruling that upheld the illegal imprisonment of more than 100,000 innocent men, women, and children who were falsely accused of endangering national security during World War II. This book is the first to trace the full arc of prejudice against Asian Americans that made internment inevitable and serves as a legal and political history of anti-Asian racism, beginning with the California gold rush and ending with Korematsu.
Infamy by Richard Reeves
ISBN: 9781250081681
Publication Date: 2016-04-12
After Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt signed an executive order that forced more than 120,000 Japanese Americans into primitive camps for the rest of war. Their only crime: looking like the enemy. In Infamy, acclaimed historian Richard Reeves delivers a sweeping narrative of this atrocity. Men we usually consider heroes--FDR, Earl Warren, Edward R. Murrow--were in this case villains. We also learn of internees who joined the military to fight for the country that had imprisoned their families, even as others fought for their rights all the way to the Supreme Court.
Altered Lives, Enduring Community by Stephen S. Fugita; Marilyn Fernandez
ISBN: 9780295983806
Publication Date: 2004-03-01
Altered Lives, Enduring Community examines the long-term effects on Japanese Americans of their World War II experiences: forced removal from their Pacific Coast homes, incarceration in desolate government camps, and ultimate resettlement. As part of Seattle's Densho: Japanese American Legacy Project, the authors collected interviews and survey data from Japanese Americans now living in King County, Washington, who were imprisoned during World War II.
The Eagles of Heart Mountain by Bradford Pearson
ISBN: 9781982107031
Publication Date: 2021-01-05
For fans of The Boys in the Boat and The Storm on Our Shores, this impeccably researched, deeply moving, never-before-told "tale that ultimately stands as a testament to the resilience of the human spirit" about a World War II incarceration camp in Wyoming and its extraordinary high school football team.
Desert Exile by Yoshiko Uchida
ISBN: 9780295961903
Publication Date: 2003-12-01
In the spring of 1942, shortly after the United States entered into war with Japan, the federal government initiated a policy whereby 110,000 persons of Japanese ancestry were rounded up and herded into camps. They were incarcerated without indictment, trial, or counsel - not because they had committed a crime, but simply because they resembled the enemy. Desert Exile tells the story of one family who lived through these sad years. It is a moving personal account by a woman who grew up in Berkeley and was attending the University of California when the war began.
After Camp by Greg Robinson
ISBN: 9780520952270
Publication Date: 2012-02-07
This book illuminates various aspects of a central but unexplored area of American history: the midcentury Japanese American experience.
From Concentration Camp to Campus by Allan W. Austin
ISBN: 9780252029332
Publication Date: 2005-01-12
In the aftermath of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and the systematic exile and incarceration of thousands of Japanese Americans, the National Japanese American Student Relocation Council was born. Created to facilitate the movement of Japanese American college students from concentration camps to colleges away from the West Coast, this privately organized and funded agency helped more than 4,000 incarcerated students pursue higher education at more than 600 schools during WWII.
That Damned Fence by Heather Hathaway
ISBN: 9780190098315
Publication Date: 2022-05-10
Until the late twentieth century, relatively few Americans knew that the United States government forcibly detained nearly 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II. At war's end, the nation, including many of those who were confined to the ten Relocation Centers - which President Roosevelt initially referred to as "concentration camps" - wished to wipe this national tragedy from memory.

eBooks

Ruth Asawa by Sam Nakahira
ISBN: 1947440098
Publication Date: 2024-03-19
Brave, unconventional, and determined, Ruth Asawa let nothing stop her from living a life intertwined with art. Renowned for her innovative wire sculptures, Japanese American artist Ruth Asawa (1926-2013) was a teenager in Southern California when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor and the United States entered World War II. Japanese Americans on the West Coast were forced into camps.
Japanese American Incarceration by Stephanie D. Hinnershitz
ISBN: 9780812253368
Publication Date: 2021-10-19
Between 1942 and 1945, the U.S. government wrongfully imprisoned thousands of Japanese American citizens and profited from their labor. Japanese American Incarceration recasts the forced removal and incarceration of approximately 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II as a history of prison labor and exploitation.
Community Newspapers and the Japanese-American Incarceration Camps by Ronald Bishop; Morgan Dudkewitz (As told to); Alissa Falcone (As told to); Renee Daggett (As told to); Ronald Bishop
ISBN: 1498511074
Publication Date: 2015-06-03
Though much has been said about Japanese-American incarceration camps, little attention is paid to the community newspapers closest to the camps and how they constructed the identities and lives of the occupants inside.
Setsuko's Secret by Shirley Ann Higuchi
ISBN: 0299327884
Publication Date: 2020-10-20
As children, Shirley Ann Higuchi and her brothers knew Heart Mountain only as the place their parents met, imagining it as a great Stardust Ballroom in rural Wyoming.
Manzanar Mosaic by Arthur A. Hansen
ISBN: 9781646424214
Publication Date: 2023-04-15
Providing a new mosaic-style view of Manzanar's complex history through unedited interviews and published scholarship, Arthur A. Hansen presents a deep, longitudinal portrait of the politics and social formation of the Japanese American community before, during, and after World War II.

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And then they came for us

Librarian Statement

A collaboration between the University Art Gallery and the University Library inspired this display. It is designed to offer supportive material aligned with the message of the gallery’s exhibit, “Reflecting on Ruth Asawa and the Garden of Remembrance,” on display from February 4 - April 12, 2025. Initially, I looked for material focused on the artists. I found a handful of items, with at least one related to an artist exhibited. However, I needed more material to provide a well-rounded display. So, I set out to visit the exhibit to draw inspiration. I was lucky to receive a personal tour from Chantel Paul, the Art Gallery Manager. Through her, I learned that Ruth Asawa and the Garden of Remembrance at San Fransico State University wasn’t the foci of the exhibit but rather the inspiration for other Japanese American artists whose lives were impacted by the internment of Japanese Americans in the United States. Much of the art on display was created by 2nd or 3rd generation Japanese American artists, who are sharing the impact of such trauma within their families. As a 2nd generation Asian American, I understood much of the stories and personal connections to the art. Please enjoy the material on display, and you can visit the University Art Gallery for FREE to see the exhibit.

Jenny Wong-Welch

Librarian

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