The Only Woman in the Room: A Memoir of Japan, Human Rights, and the Arts
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.68 (543 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 022613251X |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 176 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2017-12-03 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Douglas MacArthur's occupation staff, where she participated in the drafting of the new constitution, with particular attention to women's rights. A daughter of internationally known pianist Leo Sirota, a Russian-Jewish emigre who settled first in Vienna, where the author was born, and then, with the shadow of Hitler looming, emigrated to Japan, where Sirota taught at the Imperial Academy of Music in Tokyo. From Publishers Weekly This engaging, modest account recalls the life and times of a woman who made significant contributions to both Japanese and American cultures, first as an advocate for civil rights clauses in the postwar Japanese constitution, later as a promoter of Asian-American amity through the arts for the Japan Society and the Asia Society. . There Gordon grew up and became, as she notes, "part Japanese." Aft
Now it can be told! Mindme A concise, elegant autobiography by Beate Sirota Gordon, an Austrian who grew up in pre-war Japan as a child and later returned to what she very much considered her home to find her parents (music teachers who refused to abandon their Japanese students as pre war tensions mounted and were held prisoner). It chronicles not only her battle with the entrenched Japanese male authority but battles with the entrenched American male authority, who weren't necessarily any less sexist than the Japanese. She took a job with the American army as a translator and ended up helping dra. Please re-publish this book! I read about this woman's extraordinary life in a New York Times article, and I read the first few pages of her autobiography in Amazon. I was very moved by her story, and I would definitely buy her book if it were available, particularly in Kindle.. "Important piece of modern history. Deserves reprinting" according to NoBooksNoLife. In Oct. 2007 I had the privilege of hearing Ms.Gordon speak at a renowned women's college in Tokyo. Now in her 80s, Ms. Gordon traveled from her home in the US to visit again the country of her youth, Japan. She spoke in Japanese for over an hour, giving a summary of her life, but most importantly, stressing the importance of the Equal Rights Clause of Japan's consititution, which by quirk of fate she had written.The Only Woman in the Room, a brief memoir, which includes her contribution to the history of post-war Japan, is refreshingly modest. For some 50 years after the
The formal declaration of World War II cut Gordon off from her parents, and she supported herself by working for a CBS listening post in San Francisco that would eventually become part of the FCC. But this was only one episode in an extraordinary life, and when Gordon died in December 2012, words of grief and praise poured from artists, humanitarians, and thinkers the world over. Gordon and an elegy by Geoffrey Paul Gordon.. Sirota was born in Vienna, but in 1929 her family moved to Japan so that her father, a noted pianist, could teach, and she grew up speaking German, English, and Japanese. This edition contains a ne