Northwinds Cafe and Gallery Features Mother-Son Collaboration in "Chieko's Story"

Comic Book Art depicts the saga of a well-to-do business woman from Japan who breaks up her home and flees to America with her four children.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

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Port Washington, NY -- September 5, 2003 - The provocative, real-life tale of a Japanese girl coming of age in the 1960s just as her family is coming apart, is portrayed in Comic Book Art form at the Northwinds Café/Gallery, 109 D Main Street, Port Washington.

Susan Hartman, raised in Great Neck and now living in Port Washington, wrote the story. Her son, Asa Jones, a cartoonist and sophomore at Pratt Institute, did the illustrations. Ms. Hartman is a freelance writer who has contributed to The New York Times, Newsday, and the Christian Science Monitor. While on assignment covering the story of Chieko, a local Japanese teacher, she became intrigued by the womans background, particularly her parents tempestuous relationship. Theirs was an arranged marriage between a traditional autocratic man and a headstrong, independent woman. Yet together they rose from poverty in post-war Japan to own a mini-empire of pinball arcades.

Then In 1964, Chiekos mother did the inconceivable. Strapping a large sum of money to her body with strips of cloth, she put on an elegant dress, and fled Japan -- abandoning her husband -- and heading to America with her four children to start a new life.

Initially, Ms. Hartman wanted to write the story as fiction, but she was so influenced by her sons love of cartooning, that they decided to collaborate, telling the story in comic book form. The pages are blown up for the gallery, and make for a compelling and striking exhibit.

The show will run through September 28th. Call 516.767.2701 for further information.