Americana - 63 - Bauman Rare Books “A Classic Of Asian American Literature”: Very Rare First Edition Of John Okada’s No-No-Boy, 1957, A “Foundational” Novel About America’s Imprisonment Of Japanese Americans In WWII, In The Highly Elusive Original Dust Jacket 59. OKADA, John. No-No Boy. Rutland, Vermont and Tokyo, Japan, 1957. Octavo, original half gray cloth, dust jacket, custom clamshell box. $10,500. First edition of Okada’s only published novel— “there is no other novel like it about Japanese Americans… a close literary kin to Richard Wright’s Native Son”—one of a very small number printed in English in postwar Japan in 1957, long forgotten until the 1971 first American edition issued after Okada’s death, an especially rare copy in the original dust jacket. “The incarceration of Americans of Japanese descent during WWII has been widely recognized as one of the most egregious violations of civil and human rights in U.S. history.” At the time John Okada was a student at the University of Washington. His father was arrested soon after Order 9066 was signed, and Okada and his family would be held and “separated for almost six months, after which they were sent to a prison camp in Minidoka, Idaho” (Los Angeles Review of Books). Okada’s No-No Boy, his only published novel, a story of a young Nisei [Japanese American] man, Ichiro Yamada, remains “an urtext of contemporary American literature” (Robinson, in John Okada, 237). A cornerstone work, it portrays the largely “unexpressed rage of the Nisei at their unjust imprisonment” (Abe, Introduction, John Okada, 4). “There is no other novel like it about Japanese Americans… a close literary kin to Richard Wright’s Native Son” (Atlantic). After U.S. publishers rejected No-No Boy, he finally found publisher Charles Tuttle, who was based in both the U.S. and Japan. No-No Boy was printed in Tokyo, in a very small printing of “1,500 in hardcover, with 1,500 softcover copies for sale only in Japan” (Abe et al., John Okada, 89-92). Issued same year in wrappers, no priority determined. Text pristine, lightest soiling, tiny bit of toning to spine head of about-fine book; small chip to spine head, faint toning to bright near-fine dust jacket. An exceptional copy. “Take away their homes and cars and beer and spaguetti and throw them in a camp, and what do you think they'll say when you try to draft them into your army of the country that is for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?”
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