Yokohama Yankee

$2,000 marketing and publicity budget Outreach to major review outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Seattle Times, New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, NPR Author will speak at Japan-America Society of Washington state, University of Washington, Japan Society of New York and Columbia University. Author will promote book via twitter and Facebook. Website for book will feature additional material, images. Author is former Japan correspondent for The Los Angeles Times and current magazine editor (Seattle Business) and read widely in Seattle business community. He will write op-eds on themes in the book: adoption, being of mixed race, etc. Possible author appearances at PNBA and NCIBA Galleys to give away at ALA-Midwinter 2013 Early galleys to City Lights, Powell's and University Bookstore (Seattle) for consideration for IndieNext pick

A sweeping memoir about a foreign family's five generations as outsiders in Japan."A lovely, unsettling family story and a vivid traversal of modern Japanese history that will impress the jaded Japan scholar and inspire the curious general reader or memoir fan." -- Library Journal Helm was the Tokyo correspondent for the Los Angeles Times when he realized that the majority of the articles he had written were "critical of Japan in some way." This was surprising considering Helm was born in Japan and is part Japanese himself. In this lovingly researched memoir, he sifts through five generations of Helms living in Japan...history buffs will relish Helm's painstaking detail and impressive command of the material. -- Publishers Weekly "Yokohama Yankee is a marvelous and eloquent work of family history. What makes it more remarkable is this family's history also sheds light on the political, economic, cultural, and racial interactions and tensions between Japan and the United States for more than a century and a half, right up to the present day. This is a humane and insightful book that will be read many years from now." -- James Fallows, national correspondent for The Atlantic and author of China Airborne "Like a sword cleaving a bittersweet fruit, Leslie Helm's saga of his mixed-blood family in Japan cuts to the inescapable isolation of being white in a country where blood still means so much. Yokohama Yankee is a painfully intimate story that spans more than a century and brings the wrenching history of modern Japan into a focus that is both razor sharp and deeply human." -- Blaine Harden, author of Escape from Camp 14 and former Tokyo bureau chief of The Washington Post "Leslie Helm has written a lively and engaging account of his remarkable family history and its intertwining with Japan ...It is a warm and human story that will charm its readers." -- Kenneth B. Pyle, Henry M. Jackson professor of Asian history and Asian studies, University of Washington, and recipient of Japan's Order of the Rising Sun "One of the finest correspondents to have reported on Japan, Leslie Helm tells the riveting, sometimes painful story of his multinational, biracial merchant family. Living in Yokohama for generations in war and peace, the Helms are at...