DESCRIPTION
I discover a “lost” aunt, separated from our family due to racism and discrimination against the disabled. She had a mental disability due to childhood meningitis. She was taken away in 1942 when all Japanese Americans were considered the enemy and imprisoned. She then became a “ward” of the state. We believed she had died, but 70 years later found her alive and living a few miles from our family farm. How did she survive? Why was she kept hidden? How did both shame and resilience empower my family to forge forward in a land that did not want them? I am haunted and driven to explore my identity and the meaning of family—especially as farmers tied to the land. I uncover family secrets that bind us to a sense of history buried in the earth that we work and a sense of place that defines us.
ADVANCE PRAISE
Mas Masumoto masterfully weaves dramatic history with domestic tragedy into a coherent, revealing whole. This “secret’ merits serious pursuit.
—Lawson Fusao Inada
“Mas is truly a poet–farmer—he writes stories like he tends to his peaches, each memory cared for and brought to life in such beautiful, thoughtful detail. This book is an immigrant story both very personal to Mas and resonant with so many others around the world, inspiring and heartbreaking, a story of family, history, memory, and lifetimes of resilience.”
—José Andrés, chef–activist and founder of World Central Kitchen
“Secrets carry the heavy weight of shame but they are also waiting to be liberated. Secret Harvests by David “Mas” Masumoto sheds light on an important chapter in Japanese American disability history by unearthing his intergenerational family story. Society can try to bury the ugliness of certain truths but they have a way of reaching toward the light.”
—Alice Wong, disability rights activist, writer and founder of Disability Visibility Project
“Exquisite and haunting. Masumoto investigates the life of a long-lost aunt and, in the process, unearths a painful chapter from his own family’s history. ‘Secret Harvests’ is a deeply affecting meditation on loss and resilience and what we owe to those we have forgotten. A heartbreaking memoir, written with clarity and grace, about how even the ‘least’ of us leaves behind an indelible mark on the world.”
—Julie Otsuka, writer and author of The Buddha in the Atti
NewsSECRET HARVESTS by David Mas Masumoto featured in Kirkus Reviews!
“Family stories fill gaps in my sense of history,” writes David Mas Masumoto in Secret Harvests: A Hidden Story of Separation and the Resilience of a Family Farm (Red Hen Press, April 18), the story of a Japanese American farm family in California, beautifully illustrated with linoleum block prints by Patricia Wakida. The author knows that his […]
Audible features David Mas Masumoto’s SECRET HARVESTS audiobook in their Editor’s Picks for AAPI Heritage Month!
My Chinese-Taiwanese grandma used to say that our Asian community comes from a long line of spoken words. From the ancient deities in our fairy tales about world creation, to the heroes whose achievements are in our epic poems, we are the descendants of storytelling. Stories help us form our voice, discover our place in […]
SECRET HARVESTS author David Mas Masumoto featured on KTVU Bay Area!
A California author and multi-generational peach farmer has penned a moving and revealing memoir about family, loss, secrets, survival and the unearthing of a painful past stemming from an unexpected gift and reunion.
David Mas Masumoto, author of SECRET HARVESTS, interviewed in the Hunger Mountain Review!
Best known for Epitaph for a Peach (a Julia Child Cookbook Award winner and James Beard Foundation Food Writing Award finalist), David “Mas” Masumoto is a third generation, Sansei, organic farmer of peaches, nectarines, apricots, and grapes for raisins on his family farm in the Central Valley of California. I first came across his work in the essay anthology Colors […]
SECRET HARVESTS by David Mas Masumoto featured in the April/May Print Edition of Pacific Citizen!
“Every family has secrets,” says David Mas Masumoto. “secrets that needto be told.” Find the full article in the April 21-May 4, 2023 print issue and stay tuned for the online version!
David Mas Masumoto’s SECRET HARVESTS featured in Alta Journal’s “16 New Books for April”!
During the Japanese American internment, Masumoto’s family was separated from a female relative with a mental disability, and after the war, they presumed she had died. Seventy years later, the author—her nephew—discovered she was alive, mere miles from the family’s farm. The startling news inspired this book, which finds Masumoto compelled to seek out his […]
David Mas Masumoto discusses SECRET HARVESTS in Civil Eats interview!
In his new book, the Japanese American peach farmer unearths his family’s painful, hidden history and explores its impact on his identity. In everything David Mas Masumoto does, from pruning peach trees to shooting the breeze with a neighbor, he’s thinking about legacy. The legacy he’ll leave behind, as a father and pioneering organic farmer, […]
David Mas Masumoto, author of SECRET HARVESTS, Discusses His Forthcoming Book in the Fresno Bee!
Art surrounds us especially at this time of year. The colors, the sounds, the aromas, the lights, the music, the images — it’s the season of art that is woven into our daily lives and helps elevate our thinking and our moods.
I discover a “lost” aunt, separated from our family due to racism and discrimination against the disabled. She had a mental disability due to childhood meningitis. She was taken away in 1942 when all Japanese Americans were considered the enemy and imprisoned. She then became a “ward” of the state. We believed she had died, but 70 years later found her alive and living a few miles from our family farm. How did she survive? Why was she kept hidden? How did both shame and resilience empower my family to forge forward in a land that did not want them? I am haunted and driven to explore my identity and the meaning of family—especially as farmers tied to the land. I uncover family secrets that bind us to a sense of history buried in the earth that we work and a sense of place that defines us.
ADVANCE PRAISE
Mas Masumoto masterfully weaves dramatic history with domestic tragedy into a coherent, revealing whole. This “secret’ merits serious pursuit.
—Lawson Fusao Inada
“Mas is truly a poet–farmer—he writes stories like he tends to his peaches, each memory cared for and brought to life in such beautiful, thoughtful detail. This book is an immigrant story both very personal to Mas and resonant with so many others around the world, inspiring and heartbreaking, a story of family, history, memory, and lifetimes of resilience.”
—José Andrés, chef–activist and founder of World Central Kitchen
“Secrets carry the heavy weight of shame but they are also waiting to be liberated. Secret Harvests by David “Mas” Masumoto sheds light on an important chapter in Japanese American disability history by unearthing his intergenerational family story. Society can try to bury the ugliness of certain truths but they have a way of reaching toward the light.”
—Alice Wong, disability rights activist, writer and founder of Disability Visibility Project
“Exquisite and haunting. Masumoto investigates the life of a long-lost aunt and, in the process, unearths a painful chapter from his own family’s history. ‘Secret Harvests’ is a deeply affecting meditation on loss and resilience and what we owe to those we have forgotten. A heartbreaking memoir, written with clarity and grace, about how even the ‘least’ of us leaves behind an indelible mark on the world.”
—Julie Otsuka, writer and author of The Buddha in the Atti
NewsSECRET HARVESTS by David Mas Masumoto featured in Kirkus Reviews!
“Family stories fill gaps in my sense of history,” writes David Mas Masumoto in Secret Harvests: A Hidden Story of Separation and the Resilience of a Family Farm (Red Hen Press, April 18), the story of a Japanese American farm family in California, beautifully illustrated with linoleum block prints by Patricia Wakida. The author knows that his […]
Audible features David Mas Masumoto’s SECRET HARVESTS audiobook in their Editor’s Picks for AAPI Heritage Month!
My Chinese-Taiwanese grandma used to say that our Asian community comes from a long line of spoken words. From the ancient deities in our fairy tales about world creation, to the heroes whose achievements are in our epic poems, we are the descendants of storytelling. Stories help us form our voice, discover our place in […]
SECRET HARVESTS author David Mas Masumoto featured on KTVU Bay Area!
A California author and multi-generational peach farmer has penned a moving and revealing memoir about family, loss, secrets, survival and the unearthing of a painful past stemming from an unexpected gift and reunion.
David Mas Masumoto, author of SECRET HARVESTS, interviewed in the Hunger Mountain Review!
Best known for Epitaph for a Peach (a Julia Child Cookbook Award winner and James Beard Foundation Food Writing Award finalist), David “Mas” Masumoto is a third generation, Sansei, organic farmer of peaches, nectarines, apricots, and grapes for raisins on his family farm in the Central Valley of California. I first came across his work in the essay anthology Colors […]
SECRET HARVESTS by David Mas Masumoto featured in the April/May Print Edition of Pacific Citizen!
“Every family has secrets,” says David Mas Masumoto. “secrets that needto be told.” Find the full article in the April 21-May 4, 2023 print issue and stay tuned for the online version!
David Mas Masumoto’s SECRET HARVESTS featured in Alta Journal’s “16 New Books for April”!
During the Japanese American internment, Masumoto’s family was separated from a female relative with a mental disability, and after the war, they presumed she had died. Seventy years later, the author—her nephew—discovered she was alive, mere miles from the family’s farm. The startling news inspired this book, which finds Masumoto compelled to seek out his […]
David Mas Masumoto discusses SECRET HARVESTS in Civil Eats interview!
In his new book, the Japanese American peach farmer unearths his family’s painful, hidden history and explores its impact on his identity. In everything David Mas Masumoto does, from pruning peach trees to shooting the breeze with a neighbor, he’s thinking about legacy. The legacy he’ll leave behind, as a father and pioneering organic farmer, […]
David Mas Masumoto, author of SECRET HARVESTS, Discusses His Forthcoming Book in the Fresno Bee!
Art surrounds us especially at this time of year. The colors, the sounds, the aromas, the lights, the music, the images — it’s the season of art that is woven into our daily lives and helps elevate our thinking and our moods.