Greg Watanabe has narrated 8 audiobooks on Listento.it by 7 authors, with an average listener rating of 5★ across 4 ratings. The most-rated is A Gesture Life.
A Gesture Life
Summary
Chang-rae Lee's A Gesture Life is now available for the first time in audio! His remarkable debut novel was called "rapturous" (The New York Times Book Review), "revelatory" (Vogue), and "wholly innovative" (Kirkus Reviews). It was the recipient of six major awards, including the prestigious Hemingway Foundation/PEN award. Now Chang-rae Lee has written a powerful and beautifully crafted second novel that leaves no doubt about the extraordinary depth and range of his talent. A Gesture Life is the story of a proper man, an upstanding citizen who has come to epitomize the decorous values of his New York suburban town. Courteous, honest, hardworking, and impenetrable, Franklin Hata, a Japanese man of Korean birth, is careful never to overstep his boundaries and to make his neighbors comfortable in his presence. Yet as his story unfolds, precipitated by the small events surrounding him, we see his life begin to unravel. Gradually we learn the mystery that has shaped the core of his being: his terrible, forbidden love for a young Korean Comfort Woman when he served as a medic in the Japanese army during World War II. In A Gesture Life, Chang-rae Lee leads us with dazzling control through a taut, suspenseful story about love, family, and community - and the secrets we harbor. As in Native Speaker, he writes of the ways outsiders conform in order to survive and the price they pay for doing so. It is a haunting, breathtaking display of talent by an acclaimed young author.
©2000 Chang-rae Lee (P)2018 Penguin Audio
Click Here to Start
Summary
Young fans of Ernie Cline's Ready Player One will love this classic video game inspired mystery filled with elements of Escape from Mr. Lemoncello's Library and From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. What if playing video games was prepping you to solve an incredible real-world puzzle and locate a priceless treasure? Twelve-year-old Ted Gerson has spent most of his summer playing video games. So when his great-uncle dies and bequeaths him all the so-called treasure in his overstuffed junk shop of an apartment, Ted explores it like it's another level to beat. And to his shock, he finds that eccentric Great-Uncle Ted actually has set the place up like a real-life escape-the-room game! Using his specially honed skills, Ted sets off to win the greatest game he's ever played, with help from his friends, Caleb and Isabel. Together they discover that Uncle Ted's "treasure" might be exactly that - real gold and jewels found by a Japanese American unit that served in World War II. With each puzzle Ted and his friends solve, they get closer to unraveling the mystery - but someone dangerous is hot on their heels, and he's not about to let them get away with the fortune. Praise for Click Here to Start: "As addictive as your favorite video game. I couldn't put it down." (Adam Gidwitz, New York Times best-selling author of A Tale Dark and Grimm) "In this clever debut, Markell takes readers on a clue-filled adventure...[and] maintains an energetic, entertaining balance of character-driven narrative and tricky challenges." (Publishers Weekly) "Markell's highly entertaining debut novel...is a well-paced read with fully realized and likable characters,...[and] should have strong appeal to gamers, fans of video game-based stories, and reluctant readers." (SLJ) A School Library Guild selection An Amazon Best Books of the Month Selection
©2016 Denis Markell (P)2016 Listening Library
Under the Blood-Red Sun
Summary
Tomi was born in Hawaii. His grandfather and parents were born in Japan and came to America to escape poverty. World War II seems far away from Tomi and his friends, who are too busy playing ball on their eighth-grade team, the Rats. But then Pearl Harbor is attacked by the Japanese, and the United States declares war on Japan. Japanese men are rounded up, and Tomi’s father and grandfather are arrested. It’s a terrifying time to be Japanese in America. But one thing doesn’t change: the loyalty of Tomi’s buddies, the Rats.
©2014 Graham Salisbury (P)2014 Listening Library
Method 15/33
Summary
Imagine a helpless, pregnant 16-year-old who's just been yanked from the serenity of her home and shoved into a dirty van. Kidnapped. Alone. Terrified. Now forget her.... Picture instead a pregnant, 16-year-old, manipulative prodigy. She is shoved into a dirty van and, from the first moment of her kidnapping, feels a calm desire for two things: to save her unborn son and to exact merciless revenge. She is methodical, calculating, scientific in her plotting. A clinical sociopath? Leaving nothing to chance, secure in her timing and practice, she waits for the perfect moment to strike. Method 15/33 is what happens when the victim is just as cold as the captors. The agents trying to find a kidnapped girl have their own frustrations and desires wrapped into this chilling drama. In the twists of intersecting stories, one is left to ponder: Who is the victim? Who is the aggressor?
©2015 Shannon Kirk (P)2015 Random House Audio
Vietgone
Summary
Saigon has fallen, and two Vietnamese refugees meet in an Arkansas relocation camp before setting out on a rip-roaring road trip across America. Qui Nguyen tells the hilarious and only slightly not-true version of how his parents met and built a life for themselves in a new land. Recorded before a live audience at the UCLA James Bridges Theater in February 2020. Director: Tim Dang Original Music by Shane Rettig Producing Director: Susan Albert Loewenberg Greg Watanabe: Playwright, Giai, Bobby, Captain Chambers, Hippie Dude Paul Yen: Quang Jeena Yi: Tong Desirée Mee Jung: Asian Girl, American Girl, Thu, Huong, Translator, Flower Girl, Redneck Biker Will Dao: Asian Guy, American Guy, Nhan, Khue Associate Artistic Director: Anna Lyse Erikson Recording Engineer and Sound Designer: Mark Holden.for The Invisible Studios, West Hollywood Senior Radio Producer: Ronn Lipkin Foley Artist: Jeff Gardner Production Manager: Erica R. Christensen Mixing Engineer: Charles Carroll Editor: Mitchell Lindskoog
©2017 Qui Nguyen (P)2020 L.A. Theatre Works
Hunt for the Bamboo Rat
Summary
Based on a true story, this World War II novel by Scott O’Dell Award winner Graham Salisbury tells how Zenji, 17, is sent from Hawaii to the Philippines to spy on the Japanese. Zenji Watanabe graduates from high school in Hawaii and is recruited into the army as a translator because he speaks perfect Japanese. He is sent to Manila undercover as a civilian to gather information on the Japanese in the Philippines. If they discover his identity, he’ll be executed as a traitor. When captured, he maintains that he is an American civilian despite unthinkable torture. He also survives being lost in the jungle for months. Zenji’s time behind enemy lines is grueling, and his survival is a testament to the strength of the human spirit. This is the fourth book in Graham Salisbury’s highly acclaimed Prisoners of the Empire series, which began with the award-winning Under the Blood-Red Sun.
©2014 Graham Salisbury (P)2014 Listening Library
Sisters Matsumoto
Summary
After the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the US government sent thousands of Japanese American citizens to detention camps. In 1945, three Japanese-American sisters return to their farm in Stockton, California, after years in an internment camp, but the once prosperous family finds it’s not easy to pick up the pieces of their former lives. As the details of their deceased father’s final arrangements emerge, the sisters must work together to keep their dreams alive. This recording is sponsored in part by California Civil Liberties Program from the California State Library. Includes a conversation with actor George Takei, playwright Philip Kan Gotanda, and director Tim Dang. Directed by Tim Dang. An L.A. Theatre Works full cast performance featuring: Keiko Agena as Rose Matsumoto June Angela as Grace Matsumoto Ron Bottitta as Mr. Hersham Kurt Kanazawa as Henry Suzy Nakamura as Chiz Matsumoto Greg Watanabe as Bola Ryun Yu as Hideo Sound Effects Artist, Jeff Gardner. Script Supervisor, Daniel Trostler. Production Manager, Nikki Hyde. Music Supervisor, Ronn Lipkin. Associate Artistic Director, Anna Lyse Erikson, Editor, Mitchell Lindskoog. Recording Engineer, Sound Designer and Mixer, Mark Holden for The Invisible Studios, West Hollywood. Recorded in Los Angeles before a live audience at The James Bridges Theater, UCLA, in November of 2018.
©2019 L.A. Theatre Works (P)2019 L.A. Theatre Works
The Blossom and the Firefly
Summary
From the award-winning author of Flygirl comes this powerful WWII romance between two Japanese teens caught in the cogs of an unwinnable war, perfect for fans of Salt to the Sea, Lovely War, and Code Name Verity. Japan 1945. Taro is a talented violinist and a kamikaze pilot in the days before his first and only mission. He believes he is ready to die for his country...until he meets Hana. Hana hasn't been the same since the day she was buried alive in a collapsed trench during a bomb raid. She wonders if it would have been better to have died that day...until she meets Taro. A song will bring them together. The war will tear them apart. Is it possible to live an entire lifetime in eight short days? Sherri L. Smith has been called "an author with astonishing range" and "a stellar storyteller" by E. Lockhart, the New York Times best-selling author of We Were Liars, and "a truly talented writer" by Jacqueline Woodson, the National Book Award-winning author of Brown Girl Dreaming. Here, with achingly beautiful prose, Smith weaves a tale of love in the face of death, of hope in the face of tragedy, set against a backdrop of the waning days of the Pacific War.
©2020 Sherri L. Smith (P)2018 Listening Library