There are a few blogs I enjoy reading, but lately I feel like I’m missing out because I’m being invited to “follow me on Twitter,” which is apparently something else. So there are blogs and twitters and there must be some other things, too, because blogs have all kinds of other icons suggesting other dimensions of cyberspace. But somehow “following” suggests more energy than I have to spend, and I have so far declined the kind invitations.
There are lots of Japanese words I just plain don’t like. Many of them are related to children and learning and schools, so I haven’t had as much contact with them workwise as mothering-wise. The end result being that I don’t think about them so much as rebel against (and complain about) them.
I recently had work-related contact with one of my least favorite phrases: 集団生活 shuudan seikatsu, literally “life in a group.” Many mothers use it as a reason for putting their children into preschool as soon as they are eligible–they want the kids to get used to shuudan seikatsu early on. (My daughters went to preschool the instant they were old enough, but it was because I wanted someone else to play with them for part of the day!)
Anyway, shuudan seikatsu has been stuck in my craw for years–and I never understood exactly why until a few days ago when the word came up in an editing job. The translator had written about the notion of a five-year-old being “adapted for communal life.” I checked the original Japanese, and sure enough, there it was–”able to deal with shuudan seikatsu.” This was the aha moment!
I grew up in the 60s and 70s–during the glory days of, well, communal life in the United States. Although I never lived in a commune, I was on the fringes for several years and saw many people I loved and respected heading in that direction. Somehow, though, the notion of being unable to personally own anything was more than I could deal with. I had a good bike, a nice flute, the typewriter my dad took to college, and a few hundred dollars in the bank. The possibility of signing away even those was just too depressing.
So that was it! My brain read shuudan seikatsu as “communal life,” and I was terrified of the notion that my children, my only blood relatives on this side of the Pacific, would be ripped from my arms, and I would never see them except for short vacations in the summer or maybe at New Years. They would belong to someone else.
After years of living in the shadow of this menacing image, I could finally kill it off–and in plenty of time to apply it to any possible grandchildren. I carefully crossed out “adapted for communal life” and wrote in “capable of participating fully in group activities.”
Suzanne Kamata’s latest book is Call Me Okaasan, Adventures in Multicultural Mothering, published by Wyatte-MacKenzie Publishing and due out in May 2009. Having read her previous two books, Losing Kei, (Leapfrog Press 2008) and Love You to Pieces (also Leapfrog Press 2008), a collection of literary works on raising children with special needs, I was excited about delving into this one to find in it shared experiences and new inspiration.
Although located in Japan herself, Kamata managed to find a wide range of female writers located in Japan, Israel, Australia, Spain, Germany, Turkey, Iran, the Philippines, South Africa and Kyrgyzstan, among others. Some of the stories are about women in the US or Canada who are the product of international marriages, have an international marriage, were born and raised in another country, or who have children adopted from other countries.
About half of the stories–interestingly enough the first and last handfuls–were beautifully written, honed-down vignettes of multicultural mothering experience. They were what I was expecting and looking forward to; something simple and significant. The ones in the middle, however, were disconcertingly subjective and jumbled. At the beginning of each story in this group, the writer appeared to have a theme she meant to be writing about, but all the other details of her life got in the way by the second or third page, and at the end, the theme would be trotted out again. By then, though, I was exhausted by the other parts of her life I’d been privy to and ready to be on my way.
I wondered whether this could just be the part of my own life that I wanted to ignore and hoped to overcome. Multicultural mothering is messy and confusing! I wanted the stories to be summed up neatly and tied with a bow. I wanted to use them as a way to make sense of my own chaotic life, and instead I’d been presented with more of it on a platter. In the end, though, I believe short stories need to have a simple theme that is adhered to and expanded on. In that way, while the stories in Okaasan succeed in presenting an alarmingly accurate portrait of raising children in more than one culture, some of them lacked in literary quality.
Having said that, there were a good number of stories that I enjoyed for both content and style. Leza Lowitz in “Like the Lotus,” “Eleven Snapshots for Your Baby Book, Reconstructed in Blues” by Susannah Pabot, and “A Hundred Years at Fifteen” by Xujun Eberlein each eloquently tells the story of several generations of family, leading up to the youngest. A topic of personal interest that ran through many of the others—language—is arguably the biggest point of potential guilt and regret for parenting in a multicultural situation. The mothers here have struggled with whether to raise their children in two languages, give up the effort, or resist the temptation to do so in the first place. “Two Names for Every Beautiful Thing” by Violeta Garcia-Mendoza, “I Am Mutti” by Corey Heller, “Promises to Myself” by Devorah Lifshutz, and “So Are You American or Malaysian?” by Juli Herman all wrote about this dilemma and, much to my relief, came up with various results and conclusions, all of which were presented coherently and convincingly.
As the stories show, parenting over cultural borderlines rarely makes for a neat narrative or happily-ever-after ending. But in the abject wish for such, I choose in a totally subjective manner, my favorite character from the stories. The award goes to Connor, in “Some Olympic Wisdom for My Home Team,” by Rose Kent. Born in Korea and adopted into a family with Irish, Korean, Black and American Indian background, Connor embodies the joy and ability to embrace life and his own diversity in a way that is perhaps our most fervent hope for our multicultural children. While watching the Beijing Olympics, the thirteen-year-old exuberantly manages to find a connection between himself, real or imagined, and almost every gold medal winner. “Check this out, Mom!” he calls out “One of ours is catching up!”
1. Do you remember the first book you ever read on your own?
2. Do you remember how you felt? If not, maybe you remember how you felt seeing a child read for the first time?
3. Do you remember a book that you read again and again as a child?
4. Why that book? Have you read it again as an adult? If so, was it like you remembered?
5. Why do you read?
These are the questions proposed by Katia on her blog “Scribbly Katia.” She suggests people answer them on their blogs and to get a discussion going.
1. I don’t! Like Suzanne Kamata, I only remember Dick, Jane and Spot.
2. As far as I remember, I always loved reading. Weekly trips to the library were sacred, and we even actually BOUGHT books if we got Christmas money. My dad wouldn’t let us get up until 7 a.m.(!) and I was usually awake much earlier doing what I called “sneak reading.” I remember reading Heidi and the Five Little Peppers series, mostly during the early morning hours. Being poor, I guess I enjoyed stories about people who were even worse off–they saved their darning threads for re-use (sob!) My mom gave me a vintage edition of The Wizard of Oz, which unfortunately disintegrated in cardboard box “storage.”
3&4. Books I “read” over and over would include all the books read on Captain Kangaroo, which my siblings and I watched religiously for many long years. I also remember borrowing and reading everything I could get my hands on by Beverly Cleary. She had such a perfect notion of how children think, and her books kept me in stitches. Her character Ramona was always in trouble, but it all made sense to me. Ramona wanted to know how Mike Mulligan went to the bathroom that day he managed to dig the entire foundation for a building with his famous steam shovel in Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel (a Captain Kangaroo favorite). Finally! Someone to ask those questions I’d always wanted answers to.
Many years later, I found all of the Beevus and Ramona, and Henry Huggins and Ribsy books translated into Japanese, so I enjoyed them all over again with my daughters. Did Ramona make sense to them, too? Suffice it to say that we once took a trip, and after we were in the car and on our way, the two girls joyfully peeled off their clothes to reveal their pajamas–a chapter right out of the book! (Ramona hated the bother of changing her clothes in the morning, and once went to school with her school clothes over her pjs.) And weren’t they pleased with themselves!
Having moaned and groaned about WaMu (see below) I would now like to say a word about an up-and-coming translation. The book will be a combination of the two above titles, English title yet to be decided. They were both written by Tadahiko Ito, who is also my latest hero. Ito worked for Sumitomo Bank for many years before being assigned president of Kansai Bank , a small local bank on the brink of closure due to the many loans it made during the “bubble” economy years to people making a living off of buying up real estate and then selling it again for a quick profit. (Sound familiar?)
Within seven years, Ito had turned the bank completely around, and it is now one of the top regional banks in Japan. As you may guess, the books tell the story of his amazing work getting the bank back up on its feet. Following the collapse of so many banks in Japan and in the US due to unstable real estate markets, you may not be surprised to hear that he completely revamped his lending process. Instead of putting the emphasis on collateral (what the bank gets if a borrower defaults on its loan), he began to take a good look at the businesses he was financing. In a nutshell, Ito saved a bank based on altruistic business practices. The idea was to save the bank, take care of the employees, take care of the customers and benefit society as a whole.
Amazing but true. Look forward to a book that lets you know how Ito succeeded and his advice on how anyone can succeed. This book isn’t The Secret and it is certainly no get-rich-quick scheme–be prepared to have your notions of “success” turned upside down!
携帯の写真で分かりにくいでしょうが、異様に本のタイトルも色もデザインも似ています。（著者はもってのほか、出版社もちがう。） ここで態度を決めないといけない。「ぱくり！」と怒るか「Imitation is the highest form of flattery」と思って、開き直るか。どうしましょう？皆さんがどちらにしても、左の方を買ってね。よろしくお願いします！
