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In this book we are introduced to Kisa Sohma, who is the tiger. She enters the story when Tohru and Yuki are walking home and come across a drenched Haru carrying something in a blanket. The bundle turns out to be a baby tiger, Kisa in animal form, and Tohru squeals “What a cute kitty!” in delight. The “cute kitty” shows her how much she wants to be around people by chomping down on Tohru’s hand. As it turns out, Kisa has run away from the Sohma house because she’s being made fun of at school. She refuses to talk, and bites Tohru every time she tries to comfort her. But Tohru’s persistance and kindness brings the girl around, and her explosive, “I LOVE YOU!!” accompanied by a warm, long hug turns her into a big sister in Kisa’s eyes. Tohru’s past healing affection for Yuki, Kyo and Haru move them to compassion for Kisa and help her come out of her shell.
Other things in Fruits Basket, Volume 5 – Ayame… oh, Ayame! makes a visit, much to the consternation of both Kyo and Yuki, the latter telling his older brother he’d rather see him sink to the bottom of the lake than “bond” with him, to which Aaya replies, “I See! We’ll ALWAYS be together as brothers then!” LOL.. poor Yuki!
We meet Megumi, Hanajima’s little brother, when the Prince Yuki Fan Club girls visit “wave girl’s” house in an attempt to find Hanajima’s weakness so they can get her out of the way of their destroying Tohru. Megumi, like his sister, also has a power. He can use a person’s name to curse them. The girls run screaming from the strange siblings house in fear. It’s also revealed in this scene that Hana has been a bit jealous of the Sohmas for taking Tohru away but, unlike the Fan Club girls, she understands if you love someone, you have to be willing to let them have their own life and other friends and not try to possess them.
Fruits Basket, volume 5 by Natsuki Takaya is one of my favorite Furuba books so far. The characters are becoming more defined, and she’s relying more on the story and character interactions than on the slapstick shtick of the first couple books. Not that I don’t find it hilarious when Kyo flies off the handle at Yuki, and I LOVE it when the cat ears and tail come out… Mags and I always giggle about that… but it’s more of a life and friends story that I feel a sense of becoming a part of their world, which always makes the best books, whether they’re regular novels or manga and graphic novels. *sigh* I give Fruits Basket, Volume 55 out of 5 stars.
At the next mess hall, lunch had finished. Mrs. Beatty had him wash and wipe down trays while she coordinated with the kitchen manager on needed supplies and menu planning. “Just hang out if you get done early,” she said. “Don’t go wandering off unless you want to stay here for the rest of the war,” Henry suspected that she wasn’t joking and nodded politely, finishing his work.
By all accounts, the mess hall was off-limits to the Japanese when it wasn’t mealtime. Most were restricted to their chicken shacks, although he did see people occasionally slogging through the mud to and from the latrine.
When he was done, Henry sat on the back step and watched smoke billowing from the stovepipes fitted into the roofs of the makeshift homes – the collective smoky mist filled the wet, gray sky above the camp. The smell of burning wood lingered in the air.
She’s here. Somewhere. Among how many people? A thousand? Five thousand? Henry didn’t know. He wanted to shout her name, or run door to door, but the guards in the towers didn’t look like they took their jobs lightly. They stood watch for the protection of the internees – so he’d been told. But if that were so, why were their guns pointed inside the camp?
It didn’t matter. Henry felt better knowing he’d made it this far. There were still a chance he’d find her. Among the sad, shocked faces, maybe he’d find her smile again. But it was getting dark. Maybe it was too late.
–Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford, page 157
Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Fordis a heart-touching tale of Henry Lee; the son of a prominent, traditional Chinese community leader who’s left his heart in the homeland; called “white devil” by his peers as he goes off to an all-white school on “scholarship” (translation – he does all the janitor work for the privilege of attending the school) where he’s bullied, heckled and harrassed on a constant basis as the only Asian student, that is, until Keiko, a Japanese-American girl, begins to “scholarship” with him; he is also father of Marty, with whom he struggles to communicate or even have much of a relationship after the death of Henry’s wife, Ethel, Marty’s mother. As the story moves back and forth in time between 1986 to 1942, the reader is able to watch the unfolding of the young, innocent love Henry discovers he has for Keiko, a love that is forbidden, and could even get him disowned, by his traditionalist father, who sees Keiko as just a relative of those people invading and destroying his home.
Their love is undeterred by the war, even when all people of Japanese decent are rounded up and sent away to live in relocation centers (concentration camps) for the remainder of the war. Henry promises he’ll wait for her, even until she’s an old woman… he promises to bring her a cane if it takes that long. However, being children, things are not always so easy or so lasting as young Henry finds out.
The discover of personal belongings left behind by residents of Nihonmachi (Japantown) in the basement of the Panama Hotel offers Henry the opportunity to open up and share with his son, and to heal the rift that had started between Henry and his own father, who made him the man and father he became, despite his desire to be different.
Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet is a quiet book, but deeply moving. It explores racial issues of the 1940s, both those between Caucasians and Asians and blacks, but also between Chinese-Americans and Japanese-Americans, and between Issei (first generation Japanese immigrants) and Nissei (second generation Japanese-Americans). The book addresses how traditional culture has had to give way to contemporary culture. It also touches on the culture of jazz, and offers music as a unifying agent… something that all cultures can share and appreciate.
One of the things that I enjoyed about Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet is that it inspires the reader to exploring history further, beyond the covers of the book. It offers a vignette of American history and life, but it doesn’t preach or teach. Ford could have very easily turned Hotel into a soap box and spoken out against the unconstitutional suspension of the civil rights of American citizens by removing them from their homes, robbing them of their property and detaining them without just cause simply because of their genetic heritage. This would have been a valid argument to have made, but Ford leaves the moral interpretation to the reader. He could have turned it into a history lesson, but, instead, provides enough information for the reader to do his or her own homework. Which I did.
And, I apparently found the same documentaries as Ford. I recommend the following for better understanding of this book:
Time of Fear– a PBS documentary about the experiences of both the Japanese-Americans sent to relocation camps in Arkansas and their Caucasian and Black Arkansan neighbors.
Unfinished Business – The Japanese-American Internment Cases – while the civil rights movement didn’t really get going until the 60s, not every Japanese-American went along with the government’s unlawful treatment of it’s own citizens. This documentary shows some of those attempts of civil disobedience.
Nanking– Performed by stars such as Woody Harrelson, Mariel Hemmingway, Jürgen Prochnow, Stephen Dorff, and Rosalind Chao, among others, this documentary dramatically tells the story of the Japanese Army’s invasion and occupation of Nanking, China.
All three of the videos will help you get a better understanding of the background of the book, but especially Nanking. It will make all the difference in understanding where Henry’s dad is coming from and help you not to see him as a mean, bigoted, old man.
Well researched, but never feeling “studied,” Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford will allow you to step into the life and culture of another, and to see the world from a different angle, while still provide you with the entrancing escape for which most of us disappear between the covers of a book. I give Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet4 egg rolls and a fortune cookie(which, I guess, is 4 1/2 stars out of 5… lol)
Don’t forget, I’m giving away my copy of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet! Leaving a comment here on the review post is your official entry, but check out The Giveaway Announcement for details on how to get bonus entries and when the contest ends!
Title: The Boat Author: Nam Le Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf (a division of Random House, Inc. New York) Publish Date: May 16, 2008 ISBN: 9780307268082
The thing is not to write what no one else could have written, but to write what only you could have written.
The Boat is a collection of seven short stories from author Nam Le. Some are more vignettes than short stories, and all showcase Le’s incredible writing talent. Nam has an amazing ability to get inside his character, be it a 60-year-old man just learning he has cancer or a 9-year-old girl in Hiroshima days before the atomic bomb. The extensive detailing Le does gives the worlds he writes a certain reality, right down to speech patterns and slang.
Brief summary of the seven stories: Love and Honor and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice: This first story is a view into the life a young Vietnamese writer in Iowa City, who is up against a deadline in his writers workshop. He scoffs at the idea of stooping to writing an “ethnic” story, but with his father’s visit, he decides to write the story of his father’s experiences in My Lai, South Vietnam army, and the tortures of a “reeducation” camp. Through the interviewing of his father, the relationship with whom has always been strained and somewhat distant, possibly even abusive, both come to understand one another better.
Cartagena: Nam’s writing style in this short story is reminiscent of Cormac McCarney’s. The lack of quotation marks and the quick changes of settings are disorienting, adding the sense of surrealism in the life of Ron, the 14 year old hit man in Medellin, Colombia.
Meeting Elise is the story of a man with cancer, still heartbroken over the loss of his lover 30 years his junior, who is about to meet his only child, whom he hasn’t seen since she was a baby when the witch, his ex-wife, “blew the county, dangling [their] daughter from her broom…”
InHalflead Bay, Jamie has a turn of luck and goes from a loser to school hero after scoring the winning goal. Because of it he catches the eye of Alison, and because of that he’s in the cross-hairs of Alison’s psychotic boyfriend. Jamie must decide whether he will remain the coward he had been or will he fight.
Hiroshima, written in the stream of consciousness of nine-year-old Mayako, is glimpse into the mindset and life of the Japanese pre-atom bomb.
Tehran Calling is the story of a Sarah Middleton, who goes to Iran to visit her best friend, who’s involved in a subversive group, and to escape the heartbreak of a love lost.
The Boat is a heartbreaking story of the reality of the dangers many refugees face. It is a story of survival, loss, and new connections. This story is particularly close to my heart as it is about a 16-year-old Vietnamese girl named Mai, which is my youngest daughter’s Vietnamese name.
Nam Le’s writing is visceral and beautiful at the same time. His style varies in each story appropriately as each story’s characters and subject matter wants it. He is sensitive to the emotions and world of his characters and shows an amazingly real view into the lives of the mains. The intricacies of a 14 year old assassin’s life in Colombia to a 60 year old man in New York City dealing with cancer and loss are so real that you forget it is written by a young Vietnamese man in Australia, as each story’s characters are as real as if you were watching them via spy-cam. Le’s writing is hypnotic and compulsive; he is a literary pied-piper and I cannot help being carried along through the stories.
From a personal perspective, I love the first and last stories the most, as they deal with Vietnamese characters. My youngest daughter’s father is from Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City), and he came to the US in 1996. His father came to Los Angeles shortly after his release from a “re-education” camp, followed by his wife a few years later. My ex, with whom I’m still very close, followed a route common to many Vietnamese who immigrated in the mid-90’s and later: first to LA, then Iowa City to work for the meat-packing company IBP (now under Tyson, inc) and finally here in Logansport. Because of my daughter, I am especially interested in everything Vietnamese, buying her any book I find on the subject or checking it out from the library, buying her CDs, cooking dishes for her (and ignore her two older sisters complaints about it when I do), and looking up sites and videos on the Internet. She is very proud of her culture, as I think she should be.
Tainted by Brooke Morgan
The Triumph of Deborah by Eva Etzioni-Halevy
Strange But True America: Weird Tales from All 50 States by John Hafnor
Red Letters by Tom Davis
Dragon House by John Shors
Book reviews, entertaining and humorous posts, as well as memes and giveaways, In the Shadow of Mt. TBR is a fun and informative place to relax in the shade!
Title: Fruits Basket, Volume 5
In the Shadow of Mt. TBR 