Book 2: Life's Work by Willie Parker. If reproductive rights are at all important to you, this is an essential book.
Book 3: Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward. Remarkable writing really made the setting jump off the page. Ruined for me by the central role dog fighting plays.
Book 4: When Elephants Weep by Jeffrey Moussaief Masson. Great content about emotions in animals, but not the greatest writing.
Book 5: No-No Boy by John Okada
There are only two books I've ever literally read cover-to-cover without putting down. No-No Boy by John Okada is one of them. Right from the beginning, the informal divisions of Japanese-American society immediately after World War 2 are front and center. If we are being brutally honest, most Americans don't think about any Japanese-Americans most days. Yet fewer think of the context Japanese-American society provides these Japanese-American individuals. And yet fewer consider the internal divisions and strife of that Japanese-American society. And almost no one considers what those divisions must have been like immediately after World War 2.
For anyone who knows not their American history, Japanese-Americans were jailed en masse during World War 2. Of course, the more innocuous term "internment" is preferred to "jailed," so as not to hurt red-blooded Americans' feelings too much about what evil deeds patriotism can lead to. Prior to FDR (yes, that liberal hero FDR) signing the order to jail/intern Japanese-Americans, many of them had family in the military. Many had businesses in their communities. Many had never set foot on Japanese soil. Yet they were rounded up, forcibly removed from their homes, often separated from their families and put in camps despite being accused of no crime, except possibly that of collectively gaining too much economic power.
The really bizarre twist is that while jailed/interned, Japanese-American men of the appropriate age (boys really) were offered an out. If they demonstrated loyalty to the United States by serving in the military, they could leave the camps. If they refused, they were sentenced to real prison time. So, the government yanks you out of your life, gives you meager conditions to live in and then asks you to demonstrate loyalty to it as a way to get out of your meager conditions; and if you don't, your conditions get even more meager.
Imagine being such a boy. Well, you've always considered yourself American. You were born and raised here, speak perfect English, go to school with everyone else and like the same movies and music. Why shouldn't you fight for your country? But, they just uprooted you and took everything from you, your family and lots of very close friends and their families. They put you in a prison camp, complete with guard towers, barbed wire and squalid living conditions with no guarantee that your home would still be your's and there for you when you got out. Why should you fight for a government that does that to you?
At the heart of No-No Boy, Okada explores the deep emotional trauma that this turn of events can impose. There is a single instant in time where you get to decide. Will you continue your internment and perhaps facing additional jail time for being disloyal? Or will you risk your life for people who just imprisoned you for no discernible reason, people who, as near as you can tell, don't see you as human? In that one instant, your two possible futures could not be more disparate and how could you possibly understand the consequences? Yet there you are.
And this is all just Chapter 1. This is just the setup. We find our main character returning to Seattle after serving his time for declining the government's offer, making him a "no-no boy." Folks who didn't have a choice had already been back for some time and most who had served were already back too. The main character had to face both of these groups upon return; and even these groups had their own divisions.
Perhaps the central reason I connected so well with this writing is that it came from an East Asian-American (EAA) voice. There is something unique about the EAA experience in this country. EAAs are in between in almost every way. Our daily existence is certainly kinder than what other minorities face, but it is still much less kind than what the majority faces. Our generational existence and memory often straddles an ocean and so must our identity. Our politics are shaped by sympathy for the collective that is left of the most-left TV politics and an individual industriousness that is right of the most-right TV politics. Our places are caricatures of our ancestral homes catering to exotic notions of foreign lands, but what is more American than Chinatown? A voice that knows and understands how this all forms a person is hard to come by. When I read this book, I found such a voice, one that knew me better than the rest.
Imagine being such a boy. Well, you've always considered yourself American. You were born and raised here, speak perfect English, go to school with everyone else and like the same movies and music. Why shouldn't you fight for your country? But, they just uprooted you and took everything from you, your family and lots of very close friends and their families. They put you in a prison camp, complete with guard towers, barbed wire and squalid living conditions with no guarantee that your home would still be your's and there for you when you got out. Why should you fight for a government that does that to you?
At the heart of No-No Boy, Okada explores the deep emotional trauma that this turn of events can impose. There is a single instant in time where you get to decide. Will you continue your internment and perhaps facing additional jail time for being disloyal? Or will you risk your life for people who just imprisoned you for no discernible reason, people who, as near as you can tell, don't see you as human? In that one instant, your two possible futures could not be more disparate and how could you possibly understand the consequences? Yet there you are.
And this is all just Chapter 1. This is just the setup. We find our main character returning to Seattle after serving his time for declining the government's offer, making him a "no-no boy." Folks who didn't have a choice had already been back for some time and most who had served were already back too. The main character had to face both of these groups upon return; and even these groups had their own divisions.
Perhaps the central reason I connected so well with this writing is that it came from an East Asian-American (EAA) voice. There is something unique about the EAA experience in this country. EAAs are in between in almost every way. Our daily existence is certainly kinder than what other minorities face, but it is still much less kind than what the majority faces. Our generational existence and memory often straddles an ocean and so must our identity. Our politics are shaped by sympathy for the collective that is left of the most-left TV politics and an individual industriousness that is right of the most-right TV politics. Our places are caricatures of our ancestral homes catering to exotic notions of foreign lands, but what is more American than Chinatown? A voice that knows and understands how this all forms a person is hard to come by. When I read this book, I found such a voice, one that knew me better than the rest.
