THE GROUND is well-suited to graduate, undergraduate, and high school classes in literature, creative writing, history, visual art, or digital media.
I’m happy to Skype into class discussions. If you’ve used the book in a class, I’d love to know what you did and how it went. And if you’d like to recommend resources to add to this list, please do, by emailing me at noguescollier@gmail.com.
• At her excellent literature/teaching blog, Barbara Duffy features a microreview of The Ground and a pair of poetry prompts based on the book.
• I’ve used this prompt several times to great effect in secondary and college classrooms.
Okinawan Museums and Memorials:
• Himeyuri Peace Memorial Museum
• Okinawa Prefectural Peace Memorial Museum
• Sakima Art Museum English / Japanese
• The Underground Headquarters of the Japanese Imperial Navy:
There’s not an official museum website in English, but this blog and this travel site provide a good overview.
Okinawa in the news:
• The Ryukyu Shimpo (English version of Okinawa’s largest daily newspaper)
• The Asahi Shimbun (English version of Japan’s largest daily newspaper)
• The New York Times
Okinawa/Pacific War Oral Histories:
• Descent into Hell: Civilian Memories of the Battle of Okinawa, collected and published by The Ryukyu Shimpo
• Women of Okinawa: Nine Voices from a Garrison Island, Ruth Ann Keyso, ed. Cornell Press / Amazon.com (with the “Look Inside” feature)
• Japan at War: An Oral History, Haruko Taya Cook and Theodore Cook (including former Okinawa governor Masahide Ota’s recollections)
• With the Old Breed at Peleliu and Okinawa, E.B. Sledge excerpts at PBS / Amazon.com (with “Look Inside” feature)
• “The Bloodiest Battle of All,” William Manchester, at The New York Times
Community and Activist Organizations, Okinawa and Beyond:
• Okinawa Iken (Okinawa Protest Advertising Action)
• Kageyama Asoko on anti-base activism at Japan Focus
• Women for Genuine Security website / Facebook
• The Hague Institute for Global Justice, “Justice for Victims of Sexual Violence: The Ongoing Controversies Surrounding Comfort Women”
• Washington Coalition for Comfort Women Issues
• Digital Museum of “The Comfort Women Issue and the Asia Women’s Fund”
• We Are Guåhan (Guåhan/Guam)
• Save Pagan Island (Guåhan/Guam/Marianas)
• Save Jeju Now (Korea)
• Working Group for Peace and Demilitarization in Asia and the Pacific
Arts & Activist Groups: Local and national, these organizations are excellent resources, and potential partners.
• Kearny Street Workshop
• Kundiman
• Asian American Literary Review
• Asian American Writers Workshop
• Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center
Scholarly histories/literary and cultural criticism:
• Donald Kirk, Okinawa and Jeju: Bases of Discontent
• Davinder L. Bhowmik, Writing Okinawa: Narrative acts of identity and resistance
• Miyume Tanji, Myth, Protest and Struggle in Okinawa
• Michael Molasky, The American Occupation of Japan and Okinawa: Literature and Memory
• “The Weight of What’s Left [Out]: Six Contemporary Erasurists on Their Craft”, Andrew David King at the Kenyon Review, November 2012: interview with Srikanth Reddy, M. NourbeSe Philip, Janet Holmes, Travis McDonald, Matthea Harvey, and David Dodd Lee
• The Deletionist: a bookmarks toolbar app that will erase any webpage into a poem. Designed by Amaranth Borsuk, Jesper Juul, and Nick Montfort.
• Wave Books Erasures Do-it-yourself interactive erasure site, featuring pre-loaded out-of-copyright texts, including text by Henry James, Virginia Woolf, Harriet Jacobs, Aristophanes, and Herman Melville. Publish your own erasure, read others. Great for in-class exercises.
• Mary Ruefle, “On Erasure”
• Media-n special issue: The Aesthetics of Erasure
Politically-anchored erasure poetry:
• Srikanth Reddy, Voyager
• M. NourbeSe Philip, Zong!
• Janet Holmes, The Ms of My Kin
• Travis McDonald, The O Mission Repo
• Nick Flynn, “Seven Testimonies (Redacted) ” in The Captain Asks for a Show of Hands
• Amaranth Borsuk and Andy Fitch, As We Know
Literature and Performance related to Okinawa, the Pacific War, and/or U.S. militarization:
• Okinawa: Two Postwar Novellas by Oshiro Tatsuhiro and Higashi Mineo (edited and translated by Steve Rabson)
• Coke Tani, My Body is My Country (performance)
• Wesley Ueunten, Okinawan Diaspora Blues (essay)
• Craig Santos Perez, from unincorporated territory [hacha] [saina] [guma’] (poems)
• Lehua M. Taitano, A Bell Made of Stones (poems)
• Don Mee Choi, The Morning News is Exciting (poems)
• Catalina Carriaga, Cultural Evidence (poems)
• Brian Komei Dempster, Topaz (poems)
• Kaia Sand, Remember to Wave (poems)
• Brandon Shimoda’s Hiroshima Library (tumblr)
• The Volta 70th Anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki special issue, curated by Brandon Shimoda
Other Erasure and Digital Poetry:
• Mary Ruefle, A Little White Shadow
•Tom Philips’ A Humument, the four-decades-strong visual erasure project: Book / Moca exhibition images / website / iTunes app
• Jen Bervin’s Nets
• Ronald Johnson’s Radios
• Amaranth Borsuk & Brad Bouse, Between Page and Screen
• Daniel Howe & John Cayley, The Readers Project
• Jhave Johnston, SPREED: Speed Screen Reading