Everything She Touched

The Life of Ruth Asawa

By: Marilyn Chase

Narrated by: Cindy Kay

This is the story of a woman who wielded imagination and hope in the face of intolerance and who transformed everything she touched into art. In this compelling biography, author Marilyn Chase brings Ruth Asawa's story to vivid life. She draws on Asawa's extensive archives and weaves together many voices to offer a complex and fascinating portrait of the artist.

Born in California in 1926, Ruth Asawa grew from a farmer's daughter to a celebrated sculptor. She survived adolescence in the World War II Japanese-American internment camps and attended the groundbreaking art school at Black Mountain College. Asawa then went on to develop her signature hanging-wire sculptures, create iconic urban installations, revolutionize arts education in her adopted hometown of San Francisco, fight through lupus, and defy convention to nurture a multiracial family.

- Documents Asawa's transformative touch—most notably by turning wire—the material of the internment camp fences—into sculptures

- Author Marilyn Chase mined Asawa's letters, diaries, sketches, and photos and conducted interviews with those who knew her to tell this inspiring story.

©2020 Marilyn Chase (P)2022 Tantor

Such An Amazing Woman

I loved this biography. The author captured Ruth and her life vividly and beautifully. The narrator made the story and Ruth come alive. Ruth was truly a unique person in every way. I wish I could have known her in life. But now I know and understand her so much more through her art, history, family and commitment to her community and the values she held.

Fantastic book!

I always loved Ruth Asawa but this book made me love her a million times more!

Complete Rapture

I had no idea who Ruth Asawa was until reading this beautiful biography. The sheer scope of this woman’s life is incomprehensible. To be able to write it so sensitively and completely is a true work of art.

Amazing life story

I loved learning about Ruth Asawa. I confess I was totally ignorant of her life and works. I learned so much about the WWII internment of Japanese Americans. Ruth was a dynamo!

I can’t wait to go see her sculptures at the DeYoung Museum.

inspirational

what a gift Ruth’s life and art was and continues to be as one gets to learn of both.