Front cover of Secrets of the Sun: A Memoir, by Mako Yoshikawa, featuring a photo of the author's father leaning one arm against a railing, with yellow sun-like rays over it.

Secrets of the Sun

A Memoir

Mako Yoshikawa

168 pp. 5.5 x 8.5

Pub Date: EXPECTED February, 2024

Subjects: Creative Nonfiction
Asian and Asian American Studies

Series: 21st Century Essays

Imprint: Mad Creek

Preorder Paperback $19.95   ISBN: 978-0-8142-5893-4

“Heartfelt and beautifully written, Secrets of the Sun is a tale of two quests—a father’s to solve the mysteries of the universe and a daughter’s to solve the mysteries of the father. One of the most compelling memoirs I’ve read in some time.” —Jerald Walker, author of National Book Award finalist How to Make a Slave and Other Essays

“In this moving account of her brilliant and abusive physicist father, Mako Yoshikawa disentangles the twisted strands of racism, misogyny, and cultural displacement that complicate both his madness and her love. A fascinating exploration that expands the boundaries of what a family memoir can be.” —Ruth Ozeki, author of The Book of Form and Emptiness

Mako Yoshikawa’s father, Shoichi, was a man of contradictions. He grew up fabulously wealthy in prewar Japan but spent his final years living in squalor; he was a proper Japanese man who craved society’s approval yet cross-dressed; he was a brilliant Princeton University physicist and renowned nuclear fusion researcher, yet his career withered as his severe bipolar disorder tightened its grip. And despite his generosity and charisma, he was often violent and cruel toward those closest to him. Yoshikawa adored him, feared him, and eventually cut him out of her life, but after he died, she was driven to try to understand this extraordinarily complex man. In Secrets of the Sun, her search takes her through everything from the Asian American experience of racism to her father’s dedication to fusion energy research, from mental illness to the treatment of women in Japan, and more. Yoshikawa gradually discovers a life filled with secrets, searching until someone from her father’s past at last provides the missing piece in her knowledge: the story of his childhood. Secrets of the Sun is about a daughter’s mission to uncover her father’s secrets and to find closure in the shadow of genius, mental illness, and violence.

Author photo

Photo by Rob Sabal

Mako Yoshikawa is the author of the novels Once Removed and One Hundred and One Ways. Her essays have been published in LitHub, Harvard Review, Southern Indiana Review, Missouri Review, and Best American Essays, among other places. She is a professor of creative writing and directs the MFA program at Emerson College. She lives in Boston and Baltimore.

Contents

Dearly Beloved

Favorite Story

My Father’s Women

Unbeatable

Work Equals Force Times Displacement

Snapshot

American Fairytale

When Tojo Came to Visit

Clothes Make the Man

The Promise

Pressure Equals Force Divided by Area

Force Equals Mass Times Acceleration

Chess Superhero

Mandala

Tokyo Monsoon

 

Acknowledgments

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