BINDERY: Launch for Jennifer Hasegawa / La Chica’s Field Guide to Banzai Living

The Bindery hosts a special evening with Jennifer Hasegawa to launch her debut book, La Chica’s Field Guide to Banzai Living. More information to be announced soon, but please save the date and join us!

From the small towns strung along the coast of the Big Island of Hawai‘i to the land-locked landscapes of Paraguay to the volcanic surface of Venus, this is a field guide to flora, fauna, and mineralia encountered, real and imagined. Packed tightly into exploratory rocket segments, these poems ignite our gravest flaws to send our grandest potentials into orbit, sprinkling us all with an antidotal salve to viewing any life as ordinary.

Banzai has a literal translation of “10,000 years” and was used by the Japanese as a rallying cry in imperialistic and militaristic contexts. Today, the word has a comparatively neutral translation of “Hurrah!” in Japan and beyond. In La Chica’s Field Guide to Banzai Living, Hasegawa aims to reclaim banzai, recasting the language of war and dogmatic loyalty into the language of a life and poetry created against racism and harmful norms, and toward tolerance and self-acceptance.

Jennifer Hasegawa is a poet and photographer. She’s sold funeral insurance door-to-door and had her suitcase stolen from a plastic surgery clinic in Paraguay. The manuscript for her first collection of poetry, La Chica’s Field Guide to Banzai Living, received the Joseph Henry Jackson Literary Award. Hasegawa’s work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, has appeared in The Adroit Journal, Bamboo Ridge, and Tule Review; and is forthcoming in Bennington Review and Vallum. She was born and raised in Hilo, Hawai‘i and lives in San Francisco.

Please note: this event will be held at The Bindery, 1727 Haight.

This is a free, all-ages event. The bar opens at 6:30pm; event starts at 7pm.

RSVP appreciated but not required.

As with all of our events, seating may be limited; you can guarantee a seat by pre-purchasing the book below — when checking out, just be sure to include a note that you’d like to attend the event. If you cannot attend the event but would like to request a signed copy of La Chica’s Field Guide to Banzai Living, order below and be sure to put your request in the comments field.

Accessibility is important to us! If you have special needs please let us know and we’ll do our absolute best to accommodate you: events@booksmith.com.