Tag Archives: Mixed-race issues

February 15, 2013 · 9:13 am

Message to Adolf (Part 2) by Osamu Tezuka, translated by Kumar Sivasubramanian

Message to Adolf 2Official word of warning: this is NOT your kiddies’ manga. Both in subject matter and graphics, Message is definitely for mature audiences. So if you have younger ones in the house, be careful not to leave the book lying around. The “godfather of manga” has plenty of other titles for the young ‘uns … his iconic Astro Boy, in spite of darker undertones parents might recognize, is a great place for the kiddies to get to know manga-godpapa.

But back to Adolf: not to keep telling you what to do – but I definitely need to here … make sure you read Part 1 of this two-volume epic work before venturing forth. To start in the middle is not recommended: if nothing else, check out the orange cover for Part 1, then compare it to this pink cover here: der Führer is degenerating before your eyes, and you’re going to need to know why before you open Part 2.

Der Führer – who we clearly know to be evil incarnate – is only one of the three Adolfs in the midst of losing his humanity. Part 2 begins with Adolf Kaufmann still able to agonize over his murderous spree: “In a few years, I’ll probably be like the SS or Gestapo, able to kill Jews without batting an eye … no, with a smirk on my face!” he writes in a letter marred by tears and sweat that he will never be able to send to his Japanese mother. Holding on to what conscience he has left – and smitten for the first time in his life – he risks his own safety to send a young Jewish girl, Elisa, to Kobe, Japan, in the care of his childhood (Jewish) best friend, Adolf Kamil.

Kaufmann is handpicked by the Führer himself to be his ”Apprentice Secretary.” He rises rapidly through the ranks of the SD [the Nazi intelligence agency, Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsführers]; his blind loyalty gives him chilling, murderous efficiency. Meanwhile, in Japan, Kamil and his mother welcome Elisa, who becomes an integral part of their shrunken family. In spite of grave danger, Kamil and Ms. Ogi keep working to disperse the secret documents that could possibly destroy Hitler, out to the rest of the world.

Even after Hitler falls (you won’t find the the version the school books taught you here), Kaufmann and Kamil’s battles continue, moving through Europe, Japan, and finally to the Middle East. Even the end of a world war can’t sever their gruesome bond. Lies, betrayal, vengeance, rape, suicide, murder, all drive up the body count – and through it all, the indestructible Sohei Toge continues to record the tragedy: “This is the story of three men named Adolf,” the epics ends – just as it began, “They each followed a different course in their lives, but they were bound together by one thread of destiny. Now that the last Adolf lies dead, I present this tale to our descendants.”

And so the story starts again, rising from the ashes of a faraway graveyard. Dare we hope that somehow, history will not repeat itself again … and again and again …?

Readers: Adult

Published: 2012 (United States)

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February 11, 2013 · 9:29 am

Hikikomori and the Rental Sister by Jeff Backhaus

Hikkomori and the Rental SisterI’m facing a bit of a conundrum with this book: just how little can I tell you and still entice you to check out this astonishing debut novel by emerging-fully-formed-like-Athena, new author Jeff Backhaus?

Hmm … might this work? Drop everything and read this book NOW.

Still not convinced? Okay, let’s try examining the title. Unless you know something about contemporary Japanese subculture, you probably aren’t familiar with the social phenomenon of hikikomori, or reclusive shut-ins. The book’s back cover explains, “literally pulling inward; refers to those who withdraw from society.” Then we have “the rental sister” – she’s a counselor hired by the hikikomori’s family to try to draw him (most are male) back into the world.

Backhaus’s dual narrative is subtly, hauntingly constructed like musical counterpoint, harmonious and independent both. His two protagonists, promised in the title, cannot ignore an important third whose presence continuously looms just beyond. And then there are the spectres …

Thomas Tessler has lived alone in his New York City room for three years. “‘I have never heard of an American hikikomori,’” his potential ‘rental sister’ remarks when she is asked to visit him by her downtown boutique employer, who in turn has been sought out by Thomas’ desperate, waiting, still-hopeful wife Silke. Megumi, a recent immigrant from Japan, is much more than a ‘rental’; her real-life experience with her own hikikomori brother makes her almost an expert.

Thomas and Megumi’s relationship begins with a letter, delivered by Silke under his door. When conversation doesn’t initially work through the locked barrier, Megumi tries pushing through an origami penguin which Thomas admires then pushes back out. But even in the exchange of offering and rejection, the tiniest promise of communication emerges … and inevitably grows.

To tell you anything more about missing children, a lost sibling, Japanese violence against Koreans, not to mention the wrenching disconnect (and reconnect) of our contemporary lives, would surely be giving away too much.

Some secrets must remain within these pages … and their discovery needs to be on your own. Go, already, go!

Tidbit: After – let me say that again – AFTER you finish this breathtaking novel, check out the 2006 New York Times article, “Shutting Themselves In,” for further fascinating, illuminating, investigative reading.

Tidbit2: On February 15, Jeff Backhaus (really! in the “twitterflesh,” as he describes it – he’s @jeff_backhaus, FYI) sent this: “@SIBookDragon Check out my new short story, about an American immigrant in Korea, either on tumblr or on an e-reader. http://bit.ly/WutTGB.” Since I’m such a Luddite, when asked, he sent these directions: “@SIBookDragon If you want to read them in order start from the bottom left. Then just keep clicking ‘PREV POST.’ Or just skip around.” As for his next novel, he reveals this: “The next novel is still a pile of notebooks, but I’m working hard.” Amazing what can happen on Twitter! Gawwww.

Readers: Adult

Published: 2013

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Filed under ...Absolute Favorites, ..Adult Readers, .Fiction, Japanese, Nonethnic-specific

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January 29, 2013 · 4:16 pm

Jefferson’s Sons: A Founding Father’s Secret Children by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

Jefferson's SonsLet me start with what has been deemed as historical record. According to the Thomas Jefferson Foundation – which not only owns and operates Jefferson’s legendary home, Monticello, but maintains the most comprehensive website focused on “Monticello, Jefferson, his family, and his times” – this is the official word on Jefferson’s relationship with his slave, Sally Hemings: “The claim that Thomas Jefferson fathered children with Sally Hemings, a slave at Monticello, entered the public arena during Jefferson’s first term as president, and it has remained a subject of discussion and disagreement for two centuries. Based on documentary, scientific, statistical, and oral history evidence, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation (TJF) Research Committee Report on Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings (January 2000) remains the most comprehensive analysis of this historical topic. Ten years later, TJF and most historians believe that, years after his wife’s death, Thomas Jefferson was the father of the six children of Sally Hemings mentioned in Jefferson’s records, including Beverly, Harriet, Madison, and Eston Hemings.”

That the man who wrote the very words of the Declaration of Independence – “all men are created equal” – not only kept slaves (he owned some 600 human beings during his lifetime), but even fathered at least six slave children, has been a “Paradox of Liberty” for hundreds of years. [If you're interested in finding out more, be sure to check out the online exhibition, presented by the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture, in partnership with TJF.]

Author Kimberly Brubaker Bradley meticulously takes Jefferson’s history as it was officially recorded at the time of her writing – while clearly acknowledging that historical evidence is not immutable – and creates an unforgettable story (soulfully read by Adenrele Ojo who correctly says ‘Monti-cello‘ like the instrument!) of the complicated relationships within a significant, mixed-race family. Sally Hemings’ children are a secret that everyone in Monticello knows, but no one ever acknowledges: her four surviving children – three sons and one daughter – call their father “Master Jefferson,” just as all the other plantation slaves must do.

Focusing on three characters – including Jefferson’s sons Beverly and Madison – Bradley imagines the lives of the slave children, growing up – and serving – their white relatives; although protected from the worst hard labors, Jefferson’s own progeny are hardly “created equal.” To contrast the comparatively easier lives of Jefferson’s children, Bradley chooses as her third protagonist another (historically documented) plantation child, Peter Fossett, who, unlike Beverly and Maddy can openly love, admire, live with his father, but will be subjected to watching his family splintered and sold.

Intended for younger readers, Bradley navigates admirably through challenging territory, voicing the confusion children must confront in a senseless world they are born into, that they cannot possibly understand. Sally must explain the incomprehensible, conflicting laws that make her children both white (seven of their eight great-grandparents were white – which in itself is a heinous history) and slaves (the child of a slave is also a slave) at the same time. She must prepare at least two of her children for their white destinies by age 18, at the cost of losing each forever … to freedom.

Whether read as history or fiction, Sons is an unflinching look at America’s tragic enslaved past. As African American History Month begins this week, Bradley’s enlightening, fascinating novel is an extremely timely reminder that “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” are hard-won “inalienable rights” meant for one and all.

Readers: Middle Grade, Young Adult, Adult

Published: 2011

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December 26, 2012 · 9:33 am

The Spy Lover by Kiana Davenport

Spy LoverThe Spy Lover lingered on the top of my must-read pile for months, mainly because I just needed a break from the death and destruction of war (seems to be my reading theme for too much of this year!). I wasn’t wrong to be afraid: set during the U.S. Civil War, the horrific, insanity-inducing body count looms large on almost every page, making the haunting, multi-layered love stories that much more precious and lasting. That love – between family, friends, lovers – can outlast the man-made evils of war is stunning testimony to the human capacity to nurture, bond, and survive.

Johnny Tom, who escapes famine and death in his native China, arrives in the new world only to be repeatedly enslaved. From the spirit-breaking labor of the Hawai’i sugar plantations, he escapes to the mainland, only to be kidnapped and shipped to New Orleans where he is offered up on the auction block as a cheaper alternative to black slaves. His brief respite as a free man, contentedly sharing life with his hapa Native American wife and their daughter, is stolen from him when the Civil War breaks out, and the town’s men are conscripted to serve in the Confederate Army. Refusing to fight for slavery, he defects to the Union side, answering promises that his loyalty will be rewarded with citizenship upon victory. He stays alive talking story, managing to turn away from the racist barrages, concentrating on nurturing the weaker and younger with his tales of travel, relationships, and survival when nothing else is left.

In another camp, Johnny’s teenage daughter has escaped her own slaughter, only to witness to thousands and thousands of unthinkable tragedies. Thinking the only way to find her father will be through her own military service, Era Tom is caregiver, comforter, savior … and spy. She tends to the Confederate wounded with genuine empathy and selfless caring, even as she gathers intelligence for the other side. She will not serve the slavers, and yet she will do everything she can to keep their butchered boys alive. When she falls headlong in love with a soldier whose mangled arm she helps to remove then hopes to heal, she must somehow find a way to justify heart, mind, and soul with her traitorous emotions …

Relying on her own ancestral history, bestselling Hawai’i author Kiana Davenport renders a little-known, vital moment of American history and bears testimony to its remarkable Chinese American survivors. When the Civil War finally ended, the U.S. government abandoned Chinese and Chinese American soldiers, revoking their promise of citizenship. Post-Civil War, Chinese Americans fell victim to one of the most virulently racist, anti-Asian periods in American history, marked by murderous purgings of whole communities throughout the American West. Racism became institutionalized, culminating in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which remained legal until 1943, but effectively enforced until 1965 when race-based immigration quotas finally lifted. Not until 2003 – almost 150 years! – were Civil War soldiers of Chinese descent recognized very posthumously with citizenship; the descendants, as Davenport notes, are still denied veteran pensions.

History – often presented via sterilized facts and surreal figures – always becomes more real with names and faces attached. Davenport vividly journeys coast-to-coast with her fearsome ancestors, stopping in some of the most gruesome, blood-soaked battlefields, and to dream and hope in some of the most majestic open frontiers. Their intertwined stories beckon … you merely need to turn the page and listen in.

Readers: Adult

Published: 2012

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December 12, 2012 · 9:35 am

The Plague of Doves by Louise Erdrich

Plague of DovesOnly when Louise Erdrich won this year’s National Book Award for The Round House, did I learn that House is the middle of a planned trilogy that begins with The Plague of Doves which, most serendipitously, was already loaded on my iPod. A bit of real magic, no? [If you, too, should choose the audible route (highly recommended), Plague's four multi-generational narrators are resonatingly voiced by Kathleen McInerney and Peter Francis James.]

Plague, a 2009 Pulitzer finalist (Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge won that year), opens with the brutal murder of almost an entire family (a baby survives), is haunted throughout by the “rough justice,” wrongful round-up and hanging of innocent Indian men who are accused of the crime, and closes with the inevitable oncoming death of a troubled small town. But in between such tragedies and endings are the complicated, vibrant, interwoven lives of Pluto’s Native and non-Native communities, whose members repel and attract, nurture and avoid each other, who love, hate, marry, and betray one another.

Evelina Harp – whose family ancestry reaches back to a direct affiliation with Louis Riel, the legendary political and spiritual leader of the Canadian Métis (Native Americans of mixed indigenous Native/First Nations and European heritage) – is the novel’s most youthful voice, who is plagued throughout by impossible love. When she’s not suffering from impassioned self-absorption, Evelina channels the stories of her near-centenarian grandfather, Mooshum; even as his tall tales often prove unreliable, his venerable age makes him the town’s de facto historical harbinger.

What Evelina doesn’t or can’t share is filled in by Judge Antone Bazil Coutts, Evelina’s uncle-by-marriage, whose distinguished demeanor masks an obsessive dead-end love story gone awry; Marn Wolde, the suffering wife of a magnetic evangelical preacher who was once a paid kidnapper; and Doctor Cordelia Lochren, the area’s first female doctor, who retires in her later years as the first and final president of Pluto’s historical society.

Like proverbial puzzle pieces, a recognizable picture forms by story’s end – more specifically, what emerges most clearly is a gnarly family tree with branches both brutally pruned and surprisingly intertwined. That said, not every question gets thoroughly answered … with two-thirds of her trilogy to come, Erdrich still has a lot of explaining to do for her very, very lucky readers. Stay tuned …

Readers: Adult

Published: 2008

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September 25, 2012 · 9:33 am

We the Animals by Justin Torres

As this debut novel is all of 125 pages (in hardcover), you have little excuse not to read it in a single sitting … not that you’ll want to be interrupted anyway. When it’s finished, you’ll be wishing for more.

That greed subliminally kicks in on page 1, with the first chapter, “We Wanted More.” Three young brothers – the youngest being the unnamed ‘I’-narrator – “… were six snatching hands, six stomping feet; we were brothers, boys, three little kings locked in a feud for more.” Their parents are not much older – their white mother, eight months pregnant, was just 14 when she convinced their 16-year-old Puerto Rican father “to do the right thing, which was to take her on a bus to Texas [from Brooklyn] and marry her.” Both are ninth-grade drop-outs, and while Ma was still in her “teenage years,” the couple settled somewhere upstate from Brooklyn, had three sons but rarely enough food, money, work, sleep, patience, even love. Ma and Paps, too, must have wanted more.

Ma works the graveyard shift at the local brewery and gets night and day confused. Paps works less predictably, cooks meals from his childhood, and tries to teach his hapa boys (“‘Mutts … You ain’t white and you ain’t Puerto Rican’”) to mamba – their “heritage” – just as he learned growing up in Spanish Harlem. Their relationship is volatile, with Paps disappearing, Ma mourning, Paps beating, Ma escaping. And yet, in between are lulls of humor and tenderness, smashing tomatoes in the kitchen, playing hide-and-seek in the close-curtained bathtub.

For years, the boys – a single three-headed entity called ‘we’ – explore, watch, tiptoe, laugh, avoid, imitate, learn. Their paths toward adulthood eventually causes shifts, and too soon ‘we’ splits into ‘they’ and ‘I/my’: “They smelled my difference … They believed I would know a world larger than their own. They hated me for my good grades, for my white ways. All at once they were disgusted, and jealous, and deeply protective, and deeply proud.”

Even as Justin Torres‘ coming-of-age narration ends with wrenching revelations and consequences, the final blow is buried in the acknowledgements (spoiler alert!): “Extra special thanks to Laura Iodice, my high school English teacher, who brought me books when I was hospitalized …” In the midst of trying to reclaim some calm at story’s end, you realize that some (most? how much?) of this searing, blinding title must be autobiographical in spite of its ‘novel’-label, and the heart can’t help but splinter for the young man whose desperate mother begged him to always stay her baby boy.

Reading Animals is reminiscent of discovering Julie Otsuka‘s When the Emperor Was Divine: both are powerful debut novels with a brevity that belies the dense intensity captured within the elliptical, careful, just-enough prose; both have breath-snatching endings. Interestingly enough, when you pull up Animals on Amazon, it’s paired with Otsuka’s 2011 National Book Award Finalist, 2012 PEN/Faulkner-winning The Buddha in the Attic, another spare gem. Sure, I’m probably reaching, but that strikes me as a sign of amazing things to come for Torres’s sophomore effort. Humor me, and mark my words …

Tidbit: Serendipity! Justin Torres is one of the National Book Foundation‘s oh so prestigious “5 Under 35” for 2012 (announced September 27, 2012 – yipppeee and whoo hoooo!). His book was chosen by the inimitable Jessica Hagedorn. Another of the 2012 judges was actually Julie Otsuka (!), who chose Claire Vaye Watkins’ Battleborn. Might have to read that, too!

Readers: Adult

Published: 2011

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September 12, 2012 · 3:07 pm

Message to Adolf (Part 1) by Osamu Tezuka, translated by Kumar Sivasubramanian

Message to Adolf 1Considered the “godfather of manga,” Osamu Tezuka is internationally renowned for his iconic Astro Boy. Introduced in Japan in 1951 as Tetsuwan Atom (Mighty Atom), Tezuka’s signature creation remains an international phenomenon across multiple platforms, rising off the page and landing in television, films, video games, and every product that could possibly be sold with an adorable little android decoration; in fact, the animated serial incarnation of Astro Boy is regarded as the progenitor of the pop culture genre known as anime. In spite of the charming little robot’s legions of young devotees, Tezuka’s initial creative impetus was clearly a personal response to the death and destruction associated with Nagasaki and Hiroshima which ended World War II just six years before: Tezuka baptized his robot Tetsuwan Atom – think atom bomb – for obvious reasons.

While that darkness in Astro Boy was mostly glossed over with irrepressible cuteness, Message to Adolf – which debuted in Japan in the 1980s, not long before Tezuka’s death in 1989 – has no such sugar-coating. Be warned: Message is quite possibly Tezuka’s most violent, disturbing work, and surely not meant for younger readers.

“This is the story of three men named Adolf,” the manga begins. “Now that the last of the Adolfs lies here dead, I would like to relate their tale for future generations,” the narrator offers. That narrator, Sohei Toge, is a Japanese journalist who promises to avenge his younger brother after he’s murdered in Berlin, Germany, for stumbling upon a secret so shocking it could destroy Hitler and the Nazi party. Toge willingly risks everything he has – his career, his relationships, his freedom, even his humanity – to protect his brother’s secret and seek justice.

Meanwhile, back in Japan, two younger Adolfs are coming of age in the mid-1930s, just as Hitler’s power matures. Adolf Kaufmann, in spite of a Japanese mother, is the perfect Aryan prototype; his father is a powerful German consulate official who’s been stationed in Kobe, Japan for 15 years, whose Nazi ties have turned him into a lying, cheating murderer. Adolf Kamil, who also lives in Kobe with his Jewish parents who run a bakery, whose family managed to escape Germany just in time, is Kaufmann’s best friend, but the two boys are not allowed to play together because of their vastly different backgrounds. Kaufmann is sent to Germany against his wishes to be trained as a proper Nazi. Kamil discovers the same secret that killed Toge’s brother. Meanwhile, Toge will do anything to find his brother’s papers which contain the evidence that could change history …

A previous English translation in five volumes appeared in 1995 from VIZ Media and is out of print (although Amazon has both new and used copies), but this new Vertical, Inc. edition is apparently much closer to Tezuka’s original. “Dear Readers,” an endnote explains, “Social situations have changed a lot since Osamu Tezuka’s works were written and some expressions incorporated in the works, which were accepted at the time, may seem awkward today. However, what underlies his work is his strong love of humanity … Now as we distribute his works, it is our intention to present the original materials faithfully, as we have done with his many translated books.”

At 650 pages, this is still just half the story [part 2 hits shelves in November]. At 650 pages, it’s also such an action-packed, never-pausing adventure, you’ll probably end up reading it in one sitting. Even as we know better, the hopeful thought that history might have somehow been changed keeps the pages turning swiftly; that lure of ‘what-if’ proves irresistible.

Readers: Adult

Published: 2012 (United States)

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August 27, 2012 · 10:12 am

Flying the Dragon by Natalie Dias Lorenzi

Soccer-loving fifth-grader Skye lives in Virginia, just outside DC, with her American mother and her Japanese father. Her best friend recently moved to San Francisco, but Skye’s getting to know her All-Star teammates better now that she’s finally made the team.

On the other side of the world, Hiroshi is excitedly preparing for the  annual rokkaku kite battle in his native village, gently guided and encouraged by his grandfather, himself a master kitebuilder and longtime champion.

For 11 years, Skye and Hiroshi didn’t even know the other existed. Then suddenly, they’re living in the same neighborhood, going to the same school, and sharing the same grandfather. Skye and Hiroshi are cousins, whose fathers are twins, separated  until now by a family misunderstanding. Seeking the latest treatment for the grandfather’s illness, Hiroshi’s parents have moved the family to Virginia, finally mending the longstanding rift.

With all they have in common, Skye and Hiroshi initially have a difficult time accepting one another … and their jarring new family situation. Skye is confronted with family members she never knew she had; in order to get to know them better, especially her grandfather, she must quickly strengthen her Japanese language skills. If she can’t get into the advanced language class, she’ll also risk losing her spot on the All-Star team which meets to practice at the same time as the less-advanced class.

Hiroshi is completely adrift, struggling in his English as a Second Language class, longing for the familiarity of home, not to mention his once exclusive relationship with his grandfather whom he must now share. With patience and kites, of course, the grandfather brings the cousins together, little by little, story by story … before it’s too late …

First-time novelist Natalie Dias Lorenzi writes a tender story about cultural disconnect, even in one’s own family. I might argue over a few details – the severity of Skye’s initial embarrassment over being associated with her (foreign) cousin at school, as well as Skye’s schoolmates’ overreaction to either her father or Skye herself speaking Japanese, seemed a bit exaggerated as the DC-area population, especially in Northern Virginia where Skye’s family lives, is hugely international, and multiple languages and cultural practices can be heard and seen on just about any street corner. That said, Lorenzi is especially insightful and sensitive to the hapa issues Skye faces, of not being American enough with an immigrant father, and not Japanese enough among her language school classmates or her newly-arrived relatives. Lorenzi’s personal experience as an ESL teacher, as well as her years abroad living in Japan (and Italy), also gives her novel a comfortable sense of authenticity; her “Acknowledgements” at book’s end is also proof of her careful research.

Slight quibbles aside, Skye and Hiroshi’s growing relationship is warmly tear-inducing, while the grandfather’s faraway stories about his beloved, late wife will keep the waterworks streaming. Young readers and their (jaded) parents both will find a resonating, touching story here, a welcome reminder to the power of family ties, strange and foreign as they might initially seem.

Readers: Middle Grade

Published: 2012

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April 19, 2012 · 10:44 am

Ichiro by Ryan Inzana

A shape-shifting teapot which releases a mischievous tanuki when heated. A fatherless hapa Japanese American boy headed to Japan to stay with his mother’s father whom he barely knows. Two stories, two cultures, two vastly different worlds, all intertwine to create a fantastical adventure in Ryan Inzana‘s surprising, highly original Ichiro.

In a New York City subway, young Ichiro watches his Japanese American mother accosted by street youths with their racist comments of “chink-ee eyes” and “could blind her wit’ dental floss.” She doesn’t engage, merely moving away, assuming (hoping) that Ichiro’s headphones have kept him protected for the time being. Ironically, and sadly, Ichiro is learning a not dissimilar racism from his bitter American grandfather – having lost his son, Ichiro’s father, to war – directed at the diverse immigrants in their post-9/11 neighborhood.

Ichiro is not quite ready to visit his mother’s homeland where she will work and he will be left behind with his Japanese grandfather. In Japan, Ichiro doesn’t quite fit in either, clearly being more American than Japanese … and the local bullies know how to make him feel unwelcome. But his grandfather is patient and gentle, ready with both historical and cultural lessons and insight. Having survived WWII, he also explains a very different view of war and its aftermath to his unaware grandson.

One night, Ichiro ventures out into his grandfather’s backyard where he’s set a trap to catch whoever – or whatever – has been stealing all the ripening fruit. When he startles a hungry tanuki, Ichiro is suddenly pulled into a completely different world … where all hell breaks loose – literally. He’s about to experience a war of his own … good guys, bad guys, and all the other characters in between …

The constant movement Inzana captures in his sweeping art quickly draws readers into his multi-layered story. Moments that might occasionally seem overly didactic to adult readers as Ichiro is forced to outgrow his simplified, childhood view of clear-cut right and wrong will probably go unnoticed by the book’s intended audience of middle grade and high school readers. In spite of the story’s swift pace, young readers will hopefully pause to give serious consideration to the all-encompassing tragedies of war, violence, collateral damage, in addition to everyday acts including bullying.

While Inzana entertains, he also gives warning. “What is the world coming to?” the final panel asks in full technicolor. Surely, with the future always encroaching, our youth will need to answer sooner than later.

Readers: Middle Grade, Young Adult, Adult

Published: 2012

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February 27, 2012 · 9:22 am

The Whole Story of Half a Girl by Veera Hiranandani

“Life’s pretty good,” Sonia thinks to herself. Her whole class is making biryani together as part of their study of India: “Getting to know the food,” says her favorite teacher, “… is the best way to really understand a country, just like sharing a meal with someone helps you get to know them.”

But when Sonia gets home that night, her entire life turns upside down. Her father’s been fired. Her English professor mother needs to work more than ever. And, worst of all, Sonia and her little sister Natasha won’t be going to Community, the only school they’ve ever known with its tiny classes, its emphasis on individuality, its nurturing family-like atmosphere.

Sonia’s Indian heritage from her father, her Jewish background from her mother, her international travels, her (mostly) purple clothes, her homemade lunches, all make her stand out as she starts sixth grade at Maplewood Middle School. On her first day, she’s especially struck with the students’ self-segregation: “If I tell [my parents] about the way the white kids and the black kids don’t sit together at lunch, Mom would race to call the PTA and arrange some kind of multicultural day,” she notes wryly. Sonia is one astute tween: “What’s funny is that at Maplewood, the school that people don’t need extra money to go to, everyone seems to have plenty of money. The kids show off their iPods and cell phones … I see other parents dropping off their kids in fancy cars like Mercedes and BMWs.”

At school, Sonia navigates new challenges – being separated from her best friend Sam, getting to know popular girl Kate while ignoring mean girl Jess, trying to figure out Alisha who’s bussed in from faraway Bridgeport. At home, things go from bad to worse. Sonia knows her father isn’t well – his sudden mood swings are especially troubling – but no one is prepared when he suddenly disappears. Will her splintered family ever be whole again?

Already the author of 20 picture books, Veera Hiranandani makes a resonating novel debut. Sonia is a memorable protagonist, facing difficult challenges that require her to question facets of her own identity for the first time: her multi-syllabic family name, her spiritual identification as Hindu or Jewish or both or neither, her place in the racial spectrum somewhere between black and white, and her uncertain relationship with her spiraling father. Hiranandani provides no easy answers here – although she does end with hopeful beginnings.

Tidbit: When Sonia’s father tells her about his life in India, he explains “[w]e lived through the partition.” Partition happened in 1947, so if her father remembers that, he must have been at least … say 5 or 6? Since Sonia’s talking iPods and cell phones, her story is contemporary … which would mean that Daddy is quite old – almost 70 at the very youngest, no?

Readers: Middle Grade

Published: 2012

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Filed under ..Middle Grade Readers, .Fiction, Hapa, Indian American, Jewish, South Asian American

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