Ronald Phillip Tanaka

Ronald Phillip Tanaka (1944–2007) was a Japanese-American poet and editor.

Life He was a Sansei (a third-generation Japanese-American), born in the Poston War Relocation Center in Arizona in 1944 behind barbed wire.

He attended Pomona College, Claremont and the University of California, Berkeley where he took an interdisciplinary Ph.D. Renaissance British Literature, philosophy of language and generative syntax and semantics under the tutelage of Julian C. Boyd. Ronald Tanaka taught English at the California State University Sacramento.

He was the single parent of two girls, Shinobu and Yoi.

Awards 1982 American Book Award for The Shino Suite: Japanese-American Poetry California Arts Council Sacramento Metropolitan Arts Commission Foundation of California State University, Sacramento

Works

Systems Models for Literary Macro-theory (1976) "On the Metaphysical Foundations of a Sansei Poetics", Journal of Ethnic Studies

Anthologies