Nisei Daughter by Monica Sone

[kizmet-42.livejournal.com]

This book was selected for the county wide community reading program here last year.

I've been reading a lot about race on Scalzi's Whatever blog this past week, and this book fitted in with that discussion well. Monica's issues with how she's treated as a Japanese ("nisei" refers to first born generation of immigrant Japanese parents) person who feels herself as American before Japanese. The internment camp experiences she had aren't what I expected (but I knew next to nothing about them before reading this book) in that as an American citizen, she was permitted to leave the camp for a life in the Midwest.

While her feelings are present, they lacked the strength and passion I expected. I'm at a loss to know if the example she gave in the memoir of how the Japanese resist the outward show of emotions explains her reticence, or if she truly was able to accept the injustice of the situation and deal with her life in a "what's done is done" mindset.

I'm not a fan of memoirs, but having read this one, I would like to read more, in particular about these internment camps. Therefore, I recommend this book. Her memoir of her childhood often amused me. The story of her mother talking to her teacher nailed the child's point of view without any reference to how she as an adult must now interpret it. It felt true and childlike - very authentic voice in that story.

Edited to correct spelling errors.

Comments

[sibilance7.livejournal.com]

Are you in NE Ohio? I think the county where I teach chose this book for the community reading program. I haven't read it, but it's good to hear more about it.

[kizmet-42.livejournal.com]

Shhhh! My location, like the Batcave, is closely guarded secret!

(Yes.)

[sibilance7.livejournal.com]

Haha - sorry! I don't often see people from that area on LJ, so I was curious.

[helens78]

as an American citizen, she was permitted to leave the camp for a life in the Midwest.

Yep! That's how my grandmother and grandfather met, in Chicago in the late '40s.

I have to pass up the vast majority of books and documentaries on the Japanese-American internment, because it is extremely triggery for me, but thank you for reading this one and posting your review! One book I didn't skip was a children's book called Baseball Saved Us by Ken Mochizuki, who also wrote Passage To Freedom: The Sugihara Story -- which was about the Japanese ambassador in Lithuania during WWII, who saved thousands of Jews by, against orders from Japan, issuing visas out of the country. I definitely recommend both of them.

[kizmet-42.livejournal.com]

Thank you, I'll see what the library can get for me.

[mllesays.livejournal.com]

I read Nisei Daughter during undergrad, in a class on 20th century women writers. We talked a lot in class about her seeming acceptance of what had happened to her family, and how dispassionate she seemed about the whole thing. I'm glad to hear someone else found that in the text as well.