Japanese-American Fiction
New 6/2009
Tallgrass by Sandra Dallas
Based on a Japanese internment camp in Colorado during WWII, this story focuses on the impact it had on the townspeople and, specifically, Rennie, the teenage protagonist. Suspicion, fear, anger, hatred, love, tenderness, pride, regret: Rennie adapts and readapts to all of these as her predictable life vanishes behind the reality of war, murder, and injustice. After a young local girl is killed, most of the town looks in one direction for the murderer. Part mystery, part historical fiction, part coming-of-age story, Tallgrass has all the elements of a tale well told: complex characters, intriguing plot, atmospheric detail, pathos, humor, and memorable turns of phrase.
The Last Assassin by Barry Eisler
Japanese-American assassin John Rain would like to get out of the killing business and see the son he's only just learned of and perhaps try to reconnect with Midori, the child's mother. But first there's the little matter of the Japanese gangster Yamaoto and Yamaoto's Chinese triad allies, who are watching over Rain's son in New York City, not to mention Delilah, the beautiful Mossad agent who shares Rain's occupation and his bed. Seizing the initiative, Rain enlists the aid of his super-sniper friend, Dox, in a campaign to remove Yamaoto. Rain and allies clash with their many powerful foes in combat scenes full of lovingly detailed descriptions of knives, guns and other martial paraphernalia.
Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford
This heartfelt novel portrays two children separated during the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. In 1940s Seattle, ethnicities do not mix. Whites, blacks, Chinese and Japanese live in separate neighborhoods, and their children attend different schools. When Henry Lee’s staunchly nationalistic father pins an “I am Chinese” button to his 12-year-old son’s shirt and enrolls him in an all-white prep school, Henry finds himself friendless and at the mercy of schoolyard bullies. His salvation arrives in the form of Keiko, a Japanese girl with whom Henry forms an instant—and forbidden—bond.
Snow Falling on Cedars by Dave Guterson
Japanese American Kabuo Miyomoto is arrested in 1954 for the murder of a fellow fisherman, Carl Heine. Miyomoto's trial, which provides a focal point to the novel, stirs memories of past relationships and events in the minds and hearts of the San Piedro Islanders. Through these memories, Guterson illuminates the grief of loss, the sting of prejudice triggered by World War II, and the imperatives of conscience. With mesmerizing clarity he conveys the voices of Kabuo's wife, Hatsue, and Ishmael Chambers, Hatsue's first love who, having suffered the loss of her love and the ravages of war, ages into a cynical journalist now covering Kabuo's trial.
Summer of the Big Bachi by Naomi Hirahara
A Japanese PI unsettles prickly, stubborn Mas Arai, Hiroshima survivor, and the other elderly Japanese-American gardeners who hang out at Wishbone Tanaka's Lawnmower Shack in a seedy L.A. suburb. The PI's disturbing questions concern a nurseryman called Joji Haneda, reported dead in the atomic blast that leveled Hiroshima in August 1945, but who was actually still alive in California in June 1999, only to be murdered one month later. Mas must revisit his past and open old wounds to solve the crime, while the specter of bachi, akin to instant bad karma, hovers over him like the black clouds of his recurring nightmares. Unlikely sleuth Mas pursues a trail that leads him to an all-night noodle shop, an illegal gambling loft, a chow-mien bowling-alley/cafe, and two very unlikely friends.
Rei Shimura Mysteries by Sujata Massey
Sujata Massey taught English in Japan and worked as a reporter for the Baltimore Sun. She applied for and won the Malice Domestic Grant for Unpublished Writers, which allowed her to get started on this beautifully crafted and award-winning cross-cultural suspense series featuring Rei Shimura, a twenty-something Japanese American English teacher living precariously in Tokyo on her tiny paycheck. The first in the series, The Salaryman's Wife, has Rei's visit to an ancient Japanese castle turn into a life-threatening murder mystery, and begins the first of many books in this fantastic, addictive series.
When the Emperor was Divine by Julie Otsuka
This heartbreaking, bracingly unsentimental debut describes in poetic detail the travails of a Japanese family living in an internment camp during World War II. After a woman whose husband was arrested on suspicion of conspiracy sees notices posted around her neighborhood in Berkeley instructing Japanese residents to evacuate, she moves with her son and daughter to an internment camp, abruptly severing her ties with her community. The next three years are spent in filthy, cramped and impersonal lodgings as the family is shuttled from one camp to another. They return to Berkeley after the war to a home that has been ravaged by vandals. When the children's father re-enters the book, he is more of a symbol than a character, reduced to a husk by interrogation and abuse. The novel never strays into melodrama-Otsuka describes the family's everyday life and the pitiful objects that define their world in the camp with admirable restraint and modesty.
My Year of Meats by Ruth Ozeki
As a writer, Ozeki draws upon her knowledge in documentary filmmaking cleverly to bring the worlds of two women together by utilizing the U.S. meat industry as a central link. Alternating between the voices of Jane (in the United States) and Akiko Ueno, the wife of Jane's boss (in Japan), Ozeki draws parallels in the lives of these two women through beef, love, television, and their desire to have children. Ozeki skillfully tackles hard-pressing issues such as the use and effects of hormones in the beef industry and topics such as cultural differences, gender roles, and sexual exploitation. Her work is unique in presentation yet moving and entertaining.
Silent Honor by Danielle Steel
The doyenne of bestseller lists weaves another romantic story in her 38th novel, a tale of separated families and shattered lives set against the internment of Japanese-Americans during WW II. In 1941, 18-year-old Hiroko Takashimaya, the beautiful, painfully shy daughter of a modern-thinking professor and a tradition-bound mother, is sent from her home in Kyoto to live in California with her American cousins and attend a prestigious women's college. Terribly homesick yet determined to make her parents proud, dutiful Hiroko begins to adjust to her new life and even does the unthinkable when she falls in love with Peter Jenkins, a handsome American professor.
All the Way Home by Ann Tatlock
A memoir-like tale of Augusta Augie Schuler Callahan, an eight-year-old German-Irish girl growing up in California who, as the youngest of six in an abusive and alcoholic family, informally adopts Sunny Yamagata and her Japanese-American family as her own in the late 1930s. War soon separates Augie from her beloved friends, who are deported to an American internment camp for Japanese-Americans. After losing touch for 23 years, they meet again in Mississippi in the racially torn 1960s, where Sunny is working to establish voting rights for blacks. Injustice is a funny thing... live long enough and you're going to get rained on, Sunny tells her friend, and as the story draws to a conclusion, they are challenged to make choices that reflect their own conflicts about race and forgiveness.
Sophie and the Rising Sun by Augusta Trobaugh
It's 1941, and small-town spinster Sophie has fallen in love with a completely inappropriate fellow. Mr. Oto, a Japanese American gardener, years older, has captured her heart. The growth of their relationship is a gradual, tentative, even poetic event. But, when the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor, Mr. Oto's newfound life comes under siege and Sophie must decide how much she is willing to risk for a future with the man who has brought such joy into her life.