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7, 2001 Professor Stafford to autograph book at Hastings, Saturday, Nov. 10 Dr. Norman Stafford, professor of English at Arkansas State University, will autograph copies of his  book
Saturday, Nov. 10, at Hastings Books, Music and Video on Caraway Road in
Jonesboro.Stafford and Yasuhiro Kawamura were the translators for "My Asakusa: Coming of Age in Prewar Tokyo," published by Tuttle Publishing. He will sign copies 2-4 p.m. and 7-9 p.m. The book consists of 72 autobiographical essays by Sadako Sawamura, who was a beloved actress who opposed the rising militarism that initiated World War II. She wrote the essays late in life, recalling a period of Japan’s political turmoil and rapid cultural change. "As a group, the essays reveal what it was like for a girl to grow up in the center of Tokyo, the Asakusa area, a place that has been a microcosm of the traditional Japanese values," Stafford said. "Today many Japanese look nostalgically to this place and the time in which Sawamura lived as a "golden era." Sawamura wrote a dozen books and was an award-winning actress, but she still referred to herself as an "Asakusa girl." Simon Piggott, reviewing the book in the magazine Avenues, complimented the translators for the "sensitive and unobtrusive way that they have preserved the voice of the old actress/Asakusa girl in the transposition from Japanese to English." In 1993-94, Stafford taught American literature, comparative literature and composition at Ibaraki University, a national university in Mito, Japan. A member of the ASU faculty since 1977, Stafford earned his doctorate from the University of Chicago and his master’s degree from Chicago State University. He won the ASU Faculty Award for Professional Service in 1999. # # # |
 University Communications Office Jonesboro, Arkansas Staff: Tom Moore Straley Snipes Vic Nelson 870-972-3056 fax 870-972-3069 Send mail: ASUnews@astate.edu Links: List of News/Announcements Upcoming Public Events About ASU ASU Home Page |
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