THE INTERNATIONAL PULPWOOD QUEENS AND TIMBER GUY BOOK CLUB
Reading Pat Conroy in Japan Suzanne Kamata
At the age of twenty-two, I set out from South Carolina for Japan with a copy of Pat Conroy’s The Water is Wide in my suitcase. I was about to spend a year as an assistant English teacher on the island of Shikoku on the governmentsponsored JET Program. I had no teaching experience, so I intended to consult Conroy’s memoir of educating underprivileged African American children on a South Carolina barrier island for inspiration. Of course, Tokushima Prefecture in the late 1980s, where I was assigned, was not exactly late 1960s Yamacraw (actually, Daufuskie) Island. 64
MAY 2022
