Sanderson holds a master of fine arts degree in fiction writing and is an independent writer. In this essay, Sanderson examines how the character Emiko Toyama in Yamamoto's short story, despite her denial of her role, serves as a sort of mother figure to people beyond her immediate family.

Hisaye Yamamoto's "The Eskimo Connection" is told through the eyes of Emiko Toyama, a poet who self-deprecatingly refers to herself simply as "an aging Nisei widow" with very little to offer a young prison pen pal. She never directly calls herself a poet in the story, although art and writing have certainly played an important part in her life, at least in the past: she is a published poet; in the internment camp she "hung out sometimes with people who wrote and painted"; she has discussed poetry with fellow writers; and she sends literature magazines to Alden in...