Pacific Time

Susan Choi's "American Woman": Revisiting the Tumult of the '70s

February 26, 2004 -- 6:30 PM

The story of Patty Hearst and the radical leftist group, the Symbionese Liberation Army, has been given new life in author Susan Choi's critically acclaimed novel, "American Woman." Choi has taken that strange episode in the turbulent mid-'70s and woven it into a fictionalized account. But her protagonist, Jenny, isn't based on the newspaper heiress, but instead on a real-life Japanese-American woman, Wendy Yoshimura, who helped Hearst and her kidnappers go underground in 1974. For Choi, "American Woman" was also an opportunity to delve into her own identity.

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