Showing results by narrator "Akie Kotabe" in All Categories

Following a devastating earthquake and tsunami, a young man in Japan finds a stray dog outside a convenience store. The dog’s tag says 'Tamon', a name evocative of the guardian deity of the north. The man decides to keep Tamon, becoming the first in a series of owners as the dog journeys south to find the boy whom disaster tore him from. Over the course of five years, Tamon will be taken into six vastly different homes, the final one belonging to his beloved first owner, Hikaru, a boy who has not spoken since the trauma of the tsunami.

Benson and Mike are two young guys who live together in Houston. Mike is a Japanese American chef at a Mexican restaurant and Benson's a Black day care teacher, and they've been together for a few years - good years - but now they're not sure why they're still a couple. There's the sex, sure and the meals Mike cooks for Benson, and, well, they love each other. But when Mike finds out his estranged father is dying in Osaka just as his acerbic Japanese mother, Mitsuko, arrives in Texas for a visit, Mike picks up and flies across the world to say goodbye.

Spanning more than 150 years, and set in multiple locations in colonial and postcolonial Asia and the United States, Inheritors paints a kaleidoscopic portrait of its characters as they grapple with the legacies of loss, imperialism, and war. Written from myriad perspectives and in a wide range of styles, each of these interconnected stories is designed to speak to the others, contesting assumptions and illuminating the complicated ways we experience, interpret, and pass on our personal and shared histories.