📖the making of a counterculture cook - alice waters
In 1999, I move from Vietnam to a suburb of California in July, turned five and started kindergarten that September. That amongst other things including sharing one bedroom and mattress with my family of four--in a house occupied with my extended family of aunts, uncles, newborn cousins--made for a tumultuous time in my life.📍manhattan
It's no wonder then that this entire summer I spent reading books from voices of the diasporas around the world. For immigrants, both our imagined community and actual community (family) are core to our existence. In these stories: maternal sacrifice and resilience, found families, the escape from choicelessness and dissatisfaction--literally if you're a first generation anything these stories will click almost uncomfortably close to home and realize this is why I am the way I am. (spoiler alert in these reviews)
1) Pachinko
Plot: Pachinko starts with Sunja immigrating to Osaka from Busan, pregnant and not wedded to the father of her child. There her family faces prejudices from the Japanese for being Korean so much that her first born son (whose dad is actually a yakuza) secretly harbors a desire to be Japanese and stops believing in God altogether (his "father" is a pastor). This might seem fine except he's 13 so it's pretty fucked up for a kid to feel that alienated that he's essentially harshened out of his faith.
Her second son (her husband's biological son) in contrast isn't concerned with being respected in Japanese society--he just wants to make lots of money. In fact, he's more brawn than brain if anything and eventually gets mixed up in the "pachinko" business (slot machines).
The story gets meaty when we see how the sons fare in society with such different perspectives on their race: one who is hyperaware of his race but wants others to be blind to it while the other strips himself of unnecessary desires for acceptance.
Why I Loved It: Features an immigrant mother who despite discrimination will do unforgiving work to provide her children with the world. Also, at the end we're introduced to Baek Solomon, Sunja's youngest progeny and we explore his relationship with a Korean-American girl (he's Korean-Japanese but speaks fluent English thanks to ritzy international school), his job at as an investment banker at a Japanese bank--and how race/racism becomes an inescapable part of his life--and how he SPOILER gives it all up because he'd rather continue his family Pachinko's business. Filial piety bitches.
2) Homegoing
Plot: The structure of Homegoing is similar to Pachinko in that it follows a family through the generations in order to fully explain the impacts of discrimination. The reason this structure works is you're able to trace the history of racism and follow its impacts through generation through generation of consequences.
Homegoing, starts off with twin sisters born to two different tribe, one sister marries a "big man" white slave trader to solidify her tribe's relationship with them and remains on the Gold Coast. The other sister is taken as part of the slave trade when her tribe is ambushed and ends up in the American south.
Why I Loved It: Some of the bits that detail discrimination (physical, sexual, mental) were a bit hard to stomach but it forces you to acknowledge that racism is insidious especially during the period of American modern history (we're talking like the 20th century here) was. Overall, Homegoing's an amazing story that makes you feel for every single character because you're able to understand and witness their history, you're able to see their upbringing, their heritage, their ancestors, and how every action that a white person took shaped the course of their life. You're able to understand how the hands of some god, some sick fate, made them--them, more than they could've made themselves.
3) Americanah
Plot: Ifemelu immigrates (by miracle) to America to study because of the shut down of universities in Nigeria. At the tender age of 20? 21? tbh I don't remember, she has to part with her first love,Obinze, but yeah yeah, they try to maintain a long distance relationship. However, through a series of events she loses touch with Obinze--what is supposed to be a few years in America turns out to be over a decade, she dates a series of other men, starts a blog, gets famous, and then decides--it's time for her to return to Lagos.
There, she runs with an expat crowd, self-deprecates her own privilege of being an expat in her native country and struggles to adjust. She does however, find Obinze, now also wildly successful and devastatingly married.
Why I Loved It: The story has highlights from Ifemelu's blogs that explore topics like racism being truly a matter of skin color, the relationship between Africans from Africa and African Americans, Michelle Obama, but the story itself--it's a coming of age one, about finding who you are in the world especially as an immigrant now having to find yourself in a completely new world, so unlike the one you were raised in. It's about love, it's about family, and it's about coming home.
