In the babbling cosmos of contemporary literature, there have been a handful of distinguished cross-cultural writers who have made the English language their own. One thinks instinctively of Vladimir Nabokov, the Russian who maneuvered words with the elan of a chess master.
More proximate in time and place is the Tokyo-based Dutch writer, Hans Brinckman, a nonfiction author, who also happens to be a poet. Yuri Kageyama, a Japanese woman with an American background, appears to be perfectly at home with both cultures, but chooses to compose her poetry exclusively in English.
Like the manifesto loving European poets of the 1920s and 1930s, Kageyama's intentions are concisely stated. In her Introduction she writes, "Racial stereotypes and sexuality have always been my obsessions." These are themes fully explored in the pages that follow.