Book #50: My Dad's Pick

“His jacket caught and tore on the barbed wire and his hands gently framed her waist, his fingers feeling the soaked sweater. He was leaning in, his forehead pressed against the cold metal wire; if there was something sharp there, he didn’t feel it. All he felt was Keiko’s cheek, wet from the rain, as she leaned in too.”
                                                                 -Jamie Ford, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

A few weeks ago, my dad recommended a book to me, Jamie Ford’s Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet. It’s the first novel that my father’s ever recommended to me – in a reversal of our usual ritual. Until now, I’ve been the one to suggest books to him. When he retired a few years back, he turned to me – his bookish, English professor daughter – for a reading list. What a delight that three years later, I find myself no longer a burnt-out prof and my dad has become such an avid reader that he’s telling me what to read.

Like many of my favourite historical novels, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet alternates between past and present plotlines. The novel opens with 56-year-old Henry Lee standing on the steps of the Panama Hotel, a boarded-up hotel located at the threshold of Seattle’s Chinatown and what was once Japantown, before World War Two. After recently purchasing the hotel, the new owner has discovered in the basement a storehouse of treasured possessions that were hidden by Japanese-American families during the war – their attempt to salvage something of the past, before being dispossessed and dragged off to internment camps in remote areas of Idaho and California. But more than simply ghosts of history, these recovered objects hold deeply personal memories for Henry, triggering him to remember his childhood sweetheart, Keiko Okabe, a young Japanese-American girl whom he’s never gotten over, even after they lost touch when she was interned. Bittersweet regret and melancholy thoughts about what might have been linger on in Henry’s imagination, taking him on an emotional odyssey into the past. Although I don’t usually gravitate to sentimental novels, this one is so compelling that I found myself feeling perfectly justified in indulging in a good cry toward the end. Maybe I’m not so highbrow after all….

Perhaps I was also feeling emotional because the novel has a personal meaning for me. The depictions of camp life in Minidoka, Idaho were particularly fascinating, since I know my grandmother was interned there. “There were no trees or grass or flowers anywhere, and barely any shrubs,” Ford writes. “Just a living, breathing landscape of tar-paper barracks spotting the dry desert terrain.” Here is a photo of my grandmother raking mud at the camp (she’s three in from the right).... My dad sent me this photo a while ago, after he discovered it online, and I blogged about my initial reactions here. But now, after reading this novel, I find my thoughts straying to the question of my grandmother’s love life…. What guy was she dreaming about as she raked, that little smile playing on her lips, the murmurings of her heart a thousand miles away?

Photos from: here and here

My New Book Cover

A couple months ago, my publisher asked me if I'd had any dreams or fantasies about how the cover of my book would appear.  I racked my brain ... but nothing came to me.  Or nothing terribly original, that is.  All I could see in my head was a stack of books (which seems obvious enough, since my book is a literary memoir about finding myself through reading), juxtaposed with a martini glass (since during the tumultuous period I write about I was consuming quite a bit of Grey Goose, indeed).

I guess this is why I'm not a graphic designer.

A big thank you to Natalia, my publisher's graphic designer, who read my book and came up with this cover.  I liked it as soon as Sandra showed it to me; it seems to capture the evocative, melancholy, searching-for-happiness mood of my book perfectly.  The sepia photo is meant to represent my grandparents, whose turbulent romance casts light on my own journey of self-discovery. 

After deciding upon the cover, Sandra and I spent a lovely, somewhat anxiety-ridden morning, drinking coffee and bouncing around ideas about the blurb on the back of the cover.  After a few more rounds of revision, which involved chopping a couple hundred glorious words (I'm definitely way too subtle and verbose to ever make my living writing promotional material), this is what we were left with - my book in a nutshell:

"Leslie Shimotakahara is a young, disenchanted English professor struggling to revive her childhood love of reading.  Her father Jack, recently retired from a high-powered corporate job, finally has time to take up reading books for pleasure.  The Reading List tells the story of Leslie’s return home to Toronto to rethink her life and decide what to do next.  At the same time, she bonds with her father over discussions about the lives, loves and works of the novelists on their shared reading list – Wharton, Joyce, Woolf and Atwood, to name a few.  But when their conversations about literature unearth some heartbreaking, deeply buried family secrets surrounding Jack’s own childhood – growing up Japanese-Canadian in the aftermath of World War II – Leslie’s world is changed forever.  Could discovering the truth about her father’s past hold the key to her finally being happy in love, life and career? 

As captivating as The Jane Austen Book Club, and as inspiring as The Film Club, The Reading List reveals how literature can sometimes help us expose our past, understand our loved ones and point us toward our future."

So there you have it.  Having the cover and back blurb in place definitely makes my book feel more real.  Until this point, I suppose there's still been something kind of abstract or dreamy about the concept of my first book.  But now, the book's become a material object and I'm filled with excitement and anticipation.  At the same time, another form of anxiety sets in.... No one in my family has read my book yet.  I wonder what they will think when my book is published in September?

Book #49: My Phobia of Writing from a Male Perspective

"I fancied myself a chief in an earlier life, a man of the people, leading them through troubled times, photographed like Sitting Bull, my profile stern in its wisdom.  But I didn't get your gifts.  Or maybe I did, only just a little."                                               -Joseph Boyden, Through Black Spruce

Last Friday, I met a friend for drinks at Reposado, where I had a curious experience.  I walked to the back patio and found my friend perched at the corner table, looking very glamorous, sipping a margarita, surrounded by other stylish people, whom she introduced as architects she works with.   I, being the only non-architect, was very interested in hearing about the world of adaptive reuse and mixed use building, but not five minutes into our conversation someone interrupted my question and shifted gears.  “I don’t mean to seem like a stalker,” this guy said, “but are you a writer?  Were you by any chance having brunch with another writer about six weeks ago at Union?” 

I nodded, recalling my poached eggs and peas in hot sauce very well.  He proceeded to tell me that he and his boyfriend had been sitting at the table next to us – dreadfully hungover.  In fact, they were so hungover that rather than having their own conversation, they’d simply put their heads on the table and listened to two hours of my friend Diane and I talking about what we’re currently writing.  So this guy knew everything about me!  He knew all about my memoir and the revisions I’d been struggling with at the time, and he knew about my next project, the historical novel I’m trying to get underway.  But what was most eerie was that he also knew about my fears and insecurities in embarking on this novel and he quoted verbatim what I’d been saying that caffeine-fuelled morning, as I poured my heart out to Diane about my desire to write the novel from three different perspectives, one of which would belong to my great-grandfather.  He was an internment camp doctor during the Second World War.  But I have this fear – phobia, really, or mild phobia, let’s just say – of writing from the male perspective.  And especially a perspective so removed in not only gender, but also place and time.

Thus my writing and my writing hang-ups became the strange focus of our conversation, making my cheeks burn very hotly, and I felt compelled to reflect on what’s at the root of my hesitancy to doff my gender and identity.  Maybe it’s simply the fact that for the past year-and-a-half, I’ve been immersed in writing a memoir….  And much as I’ve enjoyed the process, the memoir genre does have limits.  While a certain creative latitude is at the memoirist’s disposal, changing one’s gender or throwing in a rape scene (unless it really happened) simply aren’t options.  And there’s the rub.  Much as I’ve loved the self-disclosure of writing memoir, I knew at the end of the process that I wanted the creative freedom of writing fiction.  So my mysterious run-in with this architect who ventriloquized my fears and anxieties as a writer so well (sadly, I didn’t manage to catch his name, even though we spoke for two hours) made me think about where I’m going and the direction in which I want to grow.  More imaginative risks.  Proliferating “selves” that go well beyond my own.

The author who’s brilliant at this – and whose Giller Award winning novel I was recently reading on my trip to Spain – is Joseph Boyden.  I love how Through Black Spruce takes the reader into the minds of two characters who are polar opposites of each other.  Will Bird is a dare-devil bush pilot lying in a coma, as he narrates in a strange, dream-like fashion, the story of his tormented past.  Annie Bird is his eccentric, beautiful niece, who’s on her own journey to find herself; she leaves the native reserve where she grew up to become a model and have a taste of the high life in Toronto, Montreal and ultimately New York.  The novel oscillates between these two very different voices, which are both utterly convincing, and yet, what’s most striking is how Boyden artfully reveals deeper similarities between their characters, emotions, fears.  I feel that any writer could learn a lot from reading Boyden, particularly on the craft of inhabiting other identities and creating voices that are distinctive and real.

Photo from: here 

An Interlude: The Drifting, Travelling Mind

Just got back to Toronto after spending the past couple weeks travelling with my boyfriend in Spain.  (This is why I've been sadly neglectful of my blog - the guest computers at countryside inns in Andalusia are positively ancient and me, being a technophobe, I found it quite difficult to navigate the Spanish key board).  But my hiatus from blogging aside, the trip was delightful, and I can definitely see why so many writers have found Spain a source of literary inspiration - from Washington Irving's lyrical musings about the Alhambra (this stunning Moorish palace in Granada, which we toured) to Hemingway's deep appreciation for bullfighting.  Btw, we did not see a bullfight, for much as I might appreciate how Hemingway describes its unique artistry and rituals of violence, there are limits to what my stomach can take - not to mention the cruelty to animals.  We did, however, spend a marvellous, boozy evening at a flamenco club, where the passion, the stomping and pure anguish of the bullfighting aesthetic seem to be perfectly captured in this extraordinary style of dance.

In between gorging on tapas and visiting museums (I loved seeing Goya's "Black Paintings" at the Prado), I managed to do a little reading at sidewalk cafes here and there.  I did not do any writing, but instead I just let my mind drift and sooner or later it of course veered around to my writing.  This historical novel I've been struggling to get started on.

You see, something strange and exhilarating happened the day before I left on my trip.  I was having lunch in the food court of the sleek office building on Bay Street where I work (like most writers, I have a day job), when my phone suddenly buzzed.  The place was so noisy that at first, I could hardly make out what this woman was saying through the equally noisy static.  Finally, she shouted, "I'm calling from Kaslo, BC."  My heart skipped a beat.  As you may recall from my blog entry a few weeks ago, I'd contacted the Kootenay Historical Society, on a whim, enquiring whether they might have any information about my great grandfather, Kozo Shimotakahara, who was the doctor at the Japanese-Canadian internment camp established at Kaslo during the Second World War (this family history is part of what I want to explore in my novel).  Well, as luck would have it, it turns out that this woman was one of the nurses who worked with my great grandfather, and by the excitement in her feeble voice, I could tell she was just as pleased to have found me as vice versa.  "The stories I could tell you about Dr. Shimo...." she cackled.  "After he arrived in our little town and quickly dispelled all the government propaganda against the Japs, you have no idea what he did...."  But the hustle and bustle of businessmen rushing by with their lunch trays was so great I could hardly make out what she was saying.  After telling her I'd be away in Spain until the end of the month, she promised to call me one evening in June so we could talk more.  I'm crossing my fingers that she will. 

Book #48: Murakami On My Mind

"Strange and mysterious things, though, aren't they - earthquakes?  We take it for granted that the earth beneath our feet is solid and stationary.  We even talk about people being 'down to earth' or having their feet planted firmly on the ground.  But suddenly one day we see that it isn't true."
                                                                                  -Haruki Murakami, After the Quake

Two months after the earthquake in Japan, I'm not hearing much about it in the media anymore.  It's strange how an event can appear larger than life for so many days - earth-shattering, literally - and then just fade away, as other more current current events take over.  Perhaps this is what I find so unsatisfying and unsettling about reading the newspaper and watching the news.  But fiction, on the other hand, provides a whole other way of seeing the world, where the everyday details surrounding an event are carefully dissected.  And so, lusting after this kind of reading experience, I picked up Haruki Murakami's After the Quake earlier this week.

In this collection of short stories, Murakami writes about how the 1995 earthquake in Kobe transformed the lives of ordinary people in Japan forever.  What I found so moving about these stories is the way that they don't focus on the most dire instances of suffering; there are no torn limbs or people trapped under crumbling buildings in these stories.  No, Murakami's art is a much more subtle, startling form of grief.  A doctor attending a conference in Thailand curses her estranged ex-husband - half wishing that he died in the earthquake - only to learn from a fortune teller that he is still alive, bringing an unexpected relief to her tormented mind.  A crazy man dreams that a giant frog has saved Tokyo from being destroyed from a quake.  And in my favourite story, a writer comforts the young daughter of the woman he's secretly been in love with for years by telling her whimsical stories about "Masakichi the bear" to distract her from her nightmares about "Mr. Earthquake."  Strangely, the earthquake pulls them all together into a new kind of improvised family.

Although Murakami was writing about the Kobe earthquake, I can't help but see these stories as illuminating the more recent earthquake, too.  And late at night when I, like several of the characters, also cannot sleep, it's comforting to pick up Murakami and get a sense that life in even the most disastrous circumstances carries on, and people manage to find new forms of happiness, however fragile.

Photo from: here 

Book #47: A Detour Through the Family Archives

"Although our material resources were thin, we had achieved something significant: we had reached out and touched the community, we had let them know we were here.  And she had no doubt that people who'd never heard of the hospital before would be beating a path to our door."
                                                                                           -Damon Galgut, The Good Doctor

Now that my memoir is complete, I've started a bit of historical research for my second project, an historical novel.  My great grandfather, Kozo Shimotakahara, was the first Japanese-Canadian doctor, and his life has long fascinated me.  Everyone in our family seems to have revered him.  According to a woman I spoke to at the Kootenay Historical Society, in the town of Kaslo, BC, where he was a doctor during the Second World War, Kozo was so esteemed by the townspeople that when he died, the Board of Trade refurnished the childrens ward of the hospital in his honour.  And my grandmother also waxed lyrical about him in an essay she published in the anthology Issei - extolling his courage for coming to Canada at age fourteen, praising his ambition to go to medical school and set up the first medical clinic in Vancouver's Japantown.

And yet, I know that the man wasn't a saint.  He had a darker side.  I've heard rumours from other family members of his violence and vicious perfectionism - if his wife and children didn't please him, he was likely to throw them down the stairs.  His eldest son he banished to sleep in the shed.  And in conversations, my father has mused about how Kozo truly felt upon moving to Kaslo, a remote ghost town in the interior of BC, during the war.  The truth is that he was sent there.  The government had set up an internment camp for Japanese-Canadians, and Kozo was expected to be the camp doctor - in return for which he and his family members would retain their freedom and property.  Through this peculiar deal that he'd brokered, he arguably assisted in the internment of his own people, and I have often wondered whether he felt any ambivalence or guilt.

It's this doctor - of divided loyalties and ambiguous scruples - that I'm interested in bringing to life.  On the outside, he was a pillar of the community, no doubt, but what did the man truly feel?  What thoughts raced through his mind late at night?

Recently, I've been reading for inspiration Damon Galgut's The Good Doctor, a novel that brilliantly explores the plight of two doctors at a decrepit hospital in rural South Africa.  Although the novel is set in the post-Apartheid era, the past is ever-present.  Billeted together simply because they're the two white doctors in this all black region, Frank and Laurence soon discover that they couldn't be more different in their attitudes and outlooks.  A cynical, seasoned older man used to working the system, Frank doesn't presume to change anything in the new South Africa.  Laurence, by sharp contrast, is fresh-faced and naive - brimming with grand ideas about community medicine and outreach clinics and racial equality.  But what makes this novel so fascinating is the way it subtly reveals deeper similarities between the two doctors and suggests how what it means to be a "good" doctor can only be a murky question in this dangerous, politically charged climate.  In the end, I found myself sympathizing with both doctors and seeing them as locked in their respective struggles for survival.  These two characters gave me a lot to think about in developing my great grandfather's characterization.

Photo from: here    

Book #46: Writing the New Toronto

"The metropolis waits, protects itself from Kafka's prophecy in Arms of the City.  The senselessness of the heaven-reaching tower.  No absoluteness."
                                                                                 -Rishma Dunlop, "Metropolis Redux"

Three years ago, I moved back to Toronto, the city where I was born, after having been away for thirteen years.  My studies had taken me all over - to Montreal, Providence, Paris and Berlin - before my short-lived career as an English professor had landed me in Antigonish, Nova Scotia.  Growing up in Toronto, I never thought there was anything particularly unique about my hometown, but my years on the road had taught me otherwise.  I was homesick - I missed the curry, kimchi, wasabi and all the other flavours of Queen Street, along with the invigorating sensation of jostling up against all these cultures on the crowded streetcar.  (I particularly missed eavesdropping on peoples' conversations, the snippets of varied accents and languages).  I came to realize that I needed these everday experiences in order to feel at home.

Last week, at the Gladstone Hotel, I attended the book launch for TOK: Writing the New Toronto, volume 6, a publication that captures for me this very experience of inhabiting a city as diverse and intriguing as Toronto.  Last year, I was delighted to have one of my short stories published in volume 5, and so I was excited to read this year's volume to see how another batch of emerging and established writers would carry on the tradition.  And I was not disappointed.

These nineteen authors of fiction, creative non-fiction and poetry represent an incredible breadth in form and experience, illustrating how varied and textured life in Toronto truly is.  There is no single immigrant experience that emerges from this collection; there is no coherent urban experience; there is only the elusive sense, as Rishma Dunlop eloquently puts it, that "In the empty theatres of the city, small productions are played out.  Rain-slicked streets.  Stories of charred roses, bones of mishap."  Identity emerges in this collection as a kind of collage, where ancestral pasts and all-too-real presents intermingle on the same page, and the authors' backgrounds appear comprised of so many different elements - sexuality, history, race, ethnicity, to name a few.  This collage-like quality is beautifully illustrated by Jo Simalaya Alcampo's "the inviolable heart," where the author writes of how she "grew up hearing stories about how my great-grandmother escaped torture in a Spanish dungeon, how my grandfather's family was murdered by the Japanese army, how our last name was randomly changed by an American soldier and how my immediate family immigrated to Canada in the 1970s to escape martial law."  There can be no simple coming to terms with this past, as the speaker scours the "lesbian of colour community in Toronto" in search of a therapist who can help her unearth a wealth of repressed memories cutting across her body, different times and places.

Although I couldn't begin to comment on all the stories and poems that moved me, I have to mention one that had a personal resonance.  Alicia Peres' story "Grace," which explores the strange friendship that develops in the suburbs of Malton between an old woman, Grace, originally from Karachi, and her Sikh neighbour, as they bond over gardening, stirred memories of my own grandmother, Esther Kayaco, in Hamilton.  The story brought back for me her intense curiosity about human nature - on the bus, when I was little, she always talked to strangers - and even now, on the rare occasions she leaves the house in her wheelchair, strangers are constantly reaching out to her, perhaps because she puzzles them, this gnome-like Japanese woman with big watchful eyes and a booming voice, or perhaps because people sense her spirit.  Grace's spunk - "No cooking - thank God!  After all these years I am frankly sick of cooking" - is exactly the sort of thing my grandmother says, interspersed with recollections of her girlhood on the Queen Charlotte Islands, the Internment camps during the war, and her hilarious mimicry of all the people she's met along the way.

Photo from: here