Hiromi Goto


Region: Vancouver BC
Generation: Shin-Ijusha
Born 1996,

Bio

Hiromi Goto is a writer and author of Chorus of Mushrooms, The Kappa Child, Hopeful Monsters, for adults, and The Water of Possibility, Half World, and Darkest Light for youth. She co-wrote Wait Until Late Afternoon (poetry) with David Bateman. Showa Shinzan, an NFB animated short directed by Alison Reiko Loader, was co-written with Jesse Nishihata. Goto’s fiction has been awarded with The Commonwealth Writer’s Prize Best First Book in Canada and the Caribbean and the Japan-Canada Book Award, among others. Her first graphic novel, Shadow Life, with Celine Loup, is slated for 2018. A mentor in The Writer’s Studio at Simon Fraser University, she is on the board of directors of Plenitude Magazine. Goto gratefully lives on unceded Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh territories.

Artist Statement

My writing has mostly been centred on the lives of Asian Canadian women. My earlier books focused on identity, feminism, and queer lives coupled with aspects of folklore, the magical or the monstrous. These still remain areas of interest, but I also feel the necessity of a mindful shift in my creative/political practice. My writing/working life has been guided by ideas of social justice, but this was framed around resisting systemic racism, sexism, homophobia relevant to my own experiences and other Asian Canadians. After having read Honouring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future: the Summary of the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada I need to rethink my ideas about the ways I write and what I write about. If I am to actively integrate some of the recommendations arising from the Commission’s findings into my life/work/heart I need to shift from an identities-based discourse to a broader one that builds relations between Indigenous communities/histories and land-based struggles; crucial responsibilities for someone who lives on Turtle Island.