Solstice Reading

[lydamorehouse]

 
Image: void cat on a huge box under the Solstice Tree

Solstice being over, I can tell you that in that big box was a f*ck ton of books. For Solstice, we have settled on giving books. This year, as it is Mason's last at home before college/university, we bought almost everything on his list. There's well over twenty-five new-to-him books in that box.

For myself, I got a couple of Japanese language resources, Genki (the textbook and the workbook) and Japanese for Dummies. I've downloaded all the supplemental materials, so I should be set to make some kind of language break-through this year. (On a similar note, I am also signed up for a Zoom class with my old language teacher Tetsuya-sensei.) 


I also got a memoir that I'd already read but loved and wanted a copy of called At Home in Japan: A Foreign Woman's Journey of Discovery by Rebecca Otowa. I loved this book. I originally took it out of the library, long ago, but it's just a slow-paced, gentle slice-of-life of an American woman who married a Japanese man and ends up living in a small town where his family, among other things, are the stewards of the local shrine. What I liked about it is that a lot of memoirs of Japan exoticize the Japanese and the Japanese way of life, but this one is very matter-of-fact. She's an outsider, looking in, but this is her FAMILY. She sees her mother-in-law as formidable not only because she's a Japanese matriarch, but also because she the dreaded mother-in-law, you know? Likewise, she approaches everything equally as personally. What I mean, by that is when she encounters 'we-ism' or other cultural touch points, she doesn't act like these are universal--just prevalent--attitudes. Everyone she meets is met as a person, not some ambassador of all things Japanese.

I take a lot of umbrage  with people who have seen one thing about Japan and assume that what they've seen (or heard) is True for All Japanese people. I'm just as annoyed when someone says, "Germans are..____"  or "Americans are...___" because there are a ton of assumptions in those kinds of statements. Which Americans are you speaking of? White? Middle class? Rural? Male? Straight? Cis? Young? And all of these questions apply when talking about the Japanese (and DO NOT come to this blog and tell me that the Japanese don't have racial differences--I will merely direct you to Wikipedia articles that explain Mexican-Japanese to you and about how the US occupation left behind a lot of mixed raced people, about how many Brazilians make a home in Japan, and how any immigrant, like here, can apply for Japanese citizenship. Yes, as a whole Japan is less diverse than Americans are, but that is not the same as somehow being a singular culture.)  

/rant

My point is, this book doesn't do that. It's a lovely, personal look at one woman's experience and I highly recommend it, particularly if you're a fan of slice-of-life stories where kind of nothing happens, but you get a lovely travelogue of a cool place along the way. There's also some lovely cultural stuff, and, as I suggest, is done deftly. 

The other book I got was a Picking book called Usha's Pickle Digest, which I had read about in the NY Times because I have been desperately looking for a good Indian pickled carrot recipe.

That's me (plus bonus rant!) What are you reading?

Comments

[offcntr]

Just finished Kate Wilhelm's last Barbara Hollaway courtroom procedural, Mirror, Mirror. Always so much fun reading books set in your hometown--much of the action took place just north of us on River Road, so I could imagine everybody zooming past my house on their way back to home/office/courthouse.

(This was also one reason I loved naomikritzer's Catfishing on Catnet. I grew up not 15 miles from where the story took place.)

[lydamorehouse]

And of course, my mother grew up in Neillsville, so I know it well too. Many of my family is still there (even if I can never remember if here are two 'l's or one.)