LONG BEACH — Susan Kiyo Ito will discuss her new book “I Would Meet You Anywhere” in conversation with Erika Hayasaki, author of “Somewhere Sisters,” on Sunday, Jan. 14, from 4 to 6 p.m. at Bel Canto Books at KUBO LB, 3976 Atlantic Ave., Long Beach.
“I Would Meet You Anywhere” (Ohio State University Press) is a memoir of one Japanese American adoptee’s experiences with her birth mother, love, family, and identity that not only looks at the author’s experience as a mixed-race adoptee, but at larger legacies of Japanese American experience in the United States, including the lasting traumas of World War II internment.
“Susan Kiyo Ito is like a surgeon operating on herself. She is delicate, precise, and at times cutting with her words. But it is all in service of her own healing and to encourage us all to be brave enough to do the same in our own stories.” — W. Kamau Bell
Ito, a Bay Area resident, co-edited the literary anthology “A Ghost At Heart’s Edge: Stories & Poems of Adoption.” Her work has appeared in The Writer, Choice, Hip Mama, Literary Mama, Catapult, Hyphen, The Bellevue Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her theatrical adaption of “Untold,” stories of reproductive stigma, was produced at Brava Theater. She is a member of the Writers’ Grotto, and teaches at the Mills College campus of Northeastern University. She was a co-organizer of “Rooted and Written,” a writing workshop for writers of color. Author’s website: https://www.thesusanito.com/
Hayasaki is a journalist based in Southern California whose long-form stories appear in The New York Times Magazine, Wired, The Atlantic, The Verge, Elle, Marie Claire, Glamour, The Guardian, MIT Technology Review, Foreign Policy, Slate, The New Republic, Newsweek, Time, and others. Her work has been recognized by the Association of Sunday Feature Editors, the Society for Features Journalism, the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Longform’s Best of Science writing of 2016 and 2017, as well as in the Best American Science and Nature Writing book series of 2019 and 2022.
She is the author of “The Death Class: A True Story About Life” (Simon & Schuster) and “Somewhere Sisters: A Story of Adoption, Identity and the Meaning of Family” (Algonquin Books, Hachette), named an NPR Best Book of the Year and a recipient of a Nautilus Book Award in Journalism and Investigative Reporting. Formerly a national writer for The Los Angeles Times, she teaches in the Literary Journalism Program.
KUBO LB is a creative community space for Filipinx, BIPOC, LGBTQ, and women led small businesses. It is a space to support and educate small businesses through retail, business workshops and more.
Bel Canto Books is a proudly woman- and BIPOC-owned independent bookstore based in Long Beach. Founded by Jhoanna Belfer, a Filipina American poet and former hospitality executive, it offers a curated selection of fiction, nonfiction and children’s books, organized around a theme of the month, in particular celebrating books by women and people of color. It hosts monthly online book clubs, author events, and workshops.
Event check-in starts at 3:45 p.m. For tickets, go to: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/susan-kiyo-ito-i-would-meet-you-anywhere-tickets-779743713437