Most Popular Books by Roy Miki

This passionate and important book-part memoir, part critical examination-explores the Japanese Canadian redress movement of the late 20th century, which sought compensation from the federal government for the internment of citizens of Japanese descent during World War II.Governor General''s Award-winner Roy Miki applies the concept of "negotiations" to the 20th-century history of Japanese Canadians-a history of mediation with mainstream Canadian institutions in order to achieve fundamental rights. From the moment the first generation (the "issei") immigrated to Canada, they had to confront, adjust to and attempt to transform a system of laws and policies based on assumptions about race that predetermined the identities of all Japanese Canadian citizens.The text interweaves the main historical narrative (a gripping story that follows the negotiators all the way to Parliament Hill) with stories from Miki''s own personal and family histories, anecdotes of pivotal events in the redress movement, and documents only available in archival collections. In the process, Redress illuminates the larger issues of race and tolerance in Canada as well as in other nations where "new citizens" seek acceptance.

The Redress Movement refers to efforts to obtain the restitution of civil rights, an apology, and/or monetary compensation from the Canadian government during the six decades that followed the World War II mass removal and confinement of Japanese Canadians. The movement emphasized the violation of rights, lost property, and the repeal of anti-Japanese legislation.

In these moving, lyrical and articulate essays, Roy Miki explores the issues and realities that comprise, for him, a writing life: redress, history, memory, "race", language, displacement— and their interrelationships— as well as the voices of those known and loved whose wisdom rings even after death, Roy Kiyooka and bpNichol. These essays form a net of thought, a way of seeing, that is full of acumen, theory, affection, faith, and skepicism— here is a brilliant series of daring meditations on the inflections of identity in our social and cultural time.

Surrender opens into a new space where ideas, borders, and authority are questioned, explored, and exploded. The poems in this book, written over a period of years in a variety of geographical sites, from Vancouver, B.C., to Sydney, Australia, interact in apposition and opposition, often in parts that face each other across pages, in dialogue, counterbalance, or antiphony.

Poetry. While incorporating photos and photomontages, Roy Miki''s THERE explores the mergins connecting social and individual language. Canada, Asia, and Europe provide the local conditions where the authorial "i" engages both with globalization and with the collision between otherness and spatialization. THERE explores the margins connecting social and individual language, echoing a multiplicity of voices drawn from conversation, advertising, historiography and scientific proceedings. Miki''s 2002 book Surrender won the Governor-General''s Award. This is his fourth book of poetry.

Letters written during the uprooting and forced relocation of the Japanese-Canadian community in late 1941.

Roy Miki''s first poetry collection is an arresting, cleanly conceived series of meditations on the ties of family and place witnessed from his own place as a third-generation Japanese-Canadian. These exquisitely balanced poems trace the fragility of ancestral bonds. "The drama of Roy''s life--his family, politics, community, his unswerving passion for justice--is transformed here into burning coals that glow through the long, cold night." --Joy Kogawa, author of Obasan

Traces the development of poet laureate George Bowering''s many writings through four decades.

Flow presents all of Roy Miki''s critically acclaimed poetry, including new work and photographs. An important collection from one of Canada''s preeminent poets.

The politics of difference, mired in the violence of colonial history, are a dominant force in the socio-economic development of contemporary society as it strikes a balance between the acceptance of new cultures, and the absorption and gentrification of them. In this collection of essays edited by the University of Guelph''s Smaro Kambourelli, Roy Miki-poet, scholar, and member of the Order of Canada-investigates the shifting currents of citizenship, globalization, and cultural practices facing Asian Canadians today through the connections of place and identity that have been forged through our developing national literature.

Poetry. MANNEQUIN RISING is the fifth book of poetry from Governor-General''s Award winner Roy Miki, his first since THERE in 2006. In MANNEQUIN RISING, Miki describes a world of consumerism, and answers the visual cacaphony of commodities and window displays with a series of poems and photomontages that reflect the uncanny juxtapositioning he sees all around him. The centerpiece of MANNEQUIN RISING is a triptych of poem sequences, "Scoping (also pronounced Shopping) in Kits," "A Walk on Granville Island," and "Viral Travels in Tokyo," where Miki closely observes three different neighborhoods and their mannequins / mannikins / manakins / manikins, almost alien yet familiar beings inhabiting and altering relationships between nature and culture.

These poems search for accesses to home as a problematic term bound into the shifting terrain of language, subjectivity and imposed identities. From seemingly idyllic digressions to the destructive internment of Japanese Canadians during and after WWII, Roy Miki''s poems can''t stop moving -- towards the next poem, towards the next file of words. But always, in every word, towards a sense of home that must always remain elusive.

Provides a fictionalized account of how local children took it upon themselves to save three dolphins trapped in the ice in Newfoundland.