Linda Furiya - Growing up in rural Indiana, Linda Furiya was from an early age ingrained with a sense of diversity of food and country living. Furiya attended Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. Initially working in marketing for companies in West Virginia and Washington D.C., Furiya relocated to the West Coast. Inspired from the Asian American scene in the Bay Area, she self-syndicated a column called "From Where I Stand." For five years, this monthly column was published in Japanese American and Canadian newspapers in San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Sacramento, Seattle, Montreal, and Toronto Canada. Furiya also lived and wrote articles on food, travel, and sex in Beijing, China. Furiya writes a column for The San Francisco Chronicle on Japanese and Chinese cooking.
Linda Furiya lives in Vermont with her son. Bento Box In The Heartland: My Japanese Girlhood In Whitebread America, is her first novel.
Linda Furiya introduces her memoir "Bento Box in the Heartland: My Japanese Girlhood in Whitebread America" an insightful and reflective coming-of-age tale. Beautifully written, each chapter is accompanied by a family recipe of mouth-watering Japanese comfort food.
While growing up in Versailles, an Indiana farm community, Linda Furiya tried to balance the outside world of Midwestern America with the Japanese traditions of her home life. As the only Asian family in a tiny township, Furiya's life revolved around Japanese food and the extraordinary lengths her parents went to in order to gather the ingredients needed to prepare it.
As immigrants, her parents approached the challenges of living in America, and maintaining their Japanese diets, with optimism and gusto. Furiva, meanwhile, was acutely aware of how food set her apart from her peers: She spent her first day of school hiding in the girls' restroom, examining her rice balls and chopsticks, and longing for a Peanut Bullter and Jelly sandwich.
"Bento Box in the Heartland" is an insightful and reflective coming-of-age tale. Beautifully written, each chapter is accompanied by a family recipe of mouth-watering Japanese comfort food- Books Inc