Firefly Lanterns
Twelve Years in Kyōto
Published on 1. September 2021
Book
Paperback/Softback
140 pages
978-1-951651-98-5 (ISBN)
Description
In 1980, having spent two years traveling the globe, Margaret Chula and her husband, John Hall, agreed that they wanted to live and work in a different culture for an extended period. They chose Japan. Chula was drawn to the subtleties of Japanese poetry and to a culture that celebrated the beauty of everyday life. Once settled, they immersed themselves in the joys and challenges of living in a traditional Japanese house. Upon their return to the U.S. in 1992, they were pressed for stories about their "exotic" lives in Ky¿to. Chula began to write her recollections in the Japanese form haibun, a combination of prose and haiku. The result offers a glimpse into the life of a gaijin (outside person) with humorous, embarrassing, and heartbreaking stories. Complemented with select photographs, Firefly Lanterns is the story of an inner journey enriched by knowedge of Japanese history and culture and relayed in the rich and artful haibun form-a beautiful homage to a remarkable and life-changing experience.
More details
Language
English
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 9 mm
Weight
312 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-951651-98-5 (9781951651985)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Margaret Chula fell in love with classical music at age ten while repeatedly listening to an LP of Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2 on her mother's Victrola. She wanted to learn piano, but her family could not afford lessons, so she settled for playing clarinet in the high school band. Her first book, Grinding my ink, appeared when she was in her forties and received the Haiku Society of America Book Award. Since then, she has published ten collections: This Moment; The Smell of Rust; Shadow Lines; Always Filling, Always Full; What Remains: Japanese Americans in Internment Camps; Just This; Winter Deepens; Daffodils at Twilight; One Leaf Detaches; and Shadow Man. Chula has been awarded fellowships to the Vermont Studio Center, The Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, and Playa. Grants from the Oregon Arts Commission and Oregon Literary Arts have supported collaboration projects with artists, musicians, photographers, and a quilt artist. She has been a featured speaker and workshop leader at writers' conferences throughout the United States, as well as in Poland, Peru, Canada, and Japan. Chula served as President of the Tanka Society of America and as Poet Laureate for Friends of Chamber Music. After living in Kyoto for twelve years, she now makes her home in Portland, Oregon.