{"id":2020,"date":"2018-10-12T09:45:24","date_gmt":"2018-10-12T16:45:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/?p=2020"},"modified":"2018-10-12T09:45:24","modified_gmt":"2018-10-12T16:45:24","slug":"sumo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/?p=2020","title":{"rendered":"Sumo!"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few years ago, arguably my most important book was published. BIG IN JAPAN<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nIt tells the story of Buck Cooper, a hapless fat guy in Texas, who goes to Japan and inadvertently becomes the first blond sumo wrestler. A sports underdog\/ fish out of water tale, t’s\u00a0Beverly Hills Ninja\u00a0<\/em>goes sumo, and Buck has to face down serious enemies and danger — to get the girl. (Of course he has to get the girl. Even in the world of sumo, I write romance.)<\/p>\n

This week I got a call from a high school teacher in Michigan who wants to use it for his class. Then yesterday, a friend posted on Facebook that it is in the curriculum of her English lit class at Arizona State University.<\/p>\n

What!! That’s amazing. It makes me really happy–not just because of the obvious YAY of it all, but because of the lessons Buck learns by immersing in a different culture, facing down enemies, and maintaining his integrity. Students and readers can come away with a desire to find their own “sumo” — the thing that makes them into the champion that waits within each one of us.<\/p>\n

I know a local English teacher who has developed a whole curriculum around the book. If you are interested in it, please contact me. I can put you in touch with him. He said he is happy to share it.<\/p>\n

This morning I remembered that while I was researching for BIG IN JAPAN, I did a blog on the content of what I found over the two+ years of writing that novel.<\/p>\n

I looked at it for the first time in … a while, and guess what. There are over 50 posts with actually some fascinating stuff I learned back then about the sport. I called it “Sumo Beautiful.” Here’s the link:\u00a0http:\/\/sumobeautiful.blogspot.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n

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A few years ago, arguably my most important book was published. BIG IN JAPAN. It tells the story of Buck Cooper, a hapless fat guy in Texas, who goes to Japan and inadvertently becomes the first blond sumo wrestler. A sports underdog\/ fish out of water tale, t’s\u00a0Beverly Hills Ninja\u00a0goes sumo, and Buck has to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"bgseo_title":"","bgseo_description":"","bgseo_robots_index":"","bgseo_robots_follow":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[684,158,3,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-clean-fiction","category-japan","category-sumo","category-sumo-novel"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s2OUjT-sumo","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2020"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2020\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2021,"href":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2020\/revisions\/2021"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}