The much-beloved longtime member of our Community of Writers, Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, died at age 90 in December. Some of us saw our friend Jeannie most recently at the 2023 memorial for her good friend and ours, Al Young. Al was legendary pals with both Jeannie and her husband, novelist James D. Houston, her writing collaborator for her landmark Farewell to Manzanar.
We will miss Jeanne, whose life and work were as impressive as they were inspiring. Her cultural and political influence was undisputed. We were fortunate to know her through the decades as she returned to Olympic Valley for the workshop week— welcomed back by CW founders Barbara and Oakley Hall — often arriving at the end of the week for the Follies and parties, staying over at the Von der Ahe staff house on the Truckee River with Jim, Al Young, Alan Cheuse, and others.
In 2003, during our summer programs, Jeannie led a memorable evening presentation on Farewell to Manzanar, when she and Jim celebrated its 30th Anniversary. Farewell to Manzanar, published in 1973, was a seminal work which explores the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. It tells the personal story of Jeanne and her family’s three-year internment in the Manzanar camp in California.
It isn’t until halfway into Richard Sandomir’s New York Times obituary of Jean, that readers find this: “Farewell to Manzanar has sold 1.6 million copies domestically, according to its publisher, HarperCollins.” Talk about burying the lede! The obituary reviews her family’s experience at the Manzanar concentration camp, her education and writing life, her family with Jim Houston, including photos by Ansel Adams and family.
The memoir became a classic of American history, part of the teaching canon, adopted in many K-12, high school, community college and university curricula. In 1977, Jeanne and Jim collaborated with Jim Korty to adapt the book into a film which won the Humanitas prize for teleplay.
Jeanne went on to write a novel, The Legend of Fire Horse Woman, and an essay and story collection, Beyond Manzanar and other views of Asian-American Womanhood. She contributed to Don’t Cry, It’s Only Thunder (Paul G. Hemsler) as well as received accolades including the Japanese American of the Biennium Award for achievement in Arts, Literature and Communication, and the National Women’s Political Caucus’s Women of Achievement Award. In 2019, she was inducted into the California Hall of Fame.
“You cannot deport 110,000 people unless you have stopped seeing individuals,” she wrote in her most famous work, a book that still has lessons to teach America.
Donors who wish to honor her may contribute to the Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston Memorial Scholarship fund to bring talented Asian writers to the workshops.
morial Scholarship fund to bring talented Asian writers to the workshops.