Brandon Shimoda in Conversation With Janice Lee

Award-winning poet Brandon Shimoda has crafted a lyrical portrait of his paternal grandfather, Midori Shimoda, whose life — child migrant, talented photographer, suspected enemy alien and spy, desert wanderer, American citizen — mirrors the arc of Japanese America in the 20th century. In a series of pilgrimages, Shimoda records the search to find his grandfather, and unfolds, in the process, a moving elegy on memory and forgetting. The Grave on the Wall (City Lights) is a memoir and book of mourning, a grandson’s attempt to reconcile his own uncontested citizenship with his grandfather’s lifelong struggle. Shimoda will be joined in conversation by Janice Lee, author of The Sky Isn’t Blue.