The first Henry Lee we meet in Hotel at the angle of Bitter and Sweet is a middle-aged widow trudging his way home with shopping bags hanging at his side. A taciturn, forlorn man. It is 1986.
The second Henry we meet is his 12-year-old self, a Chinese American school boy, whose father pins a badge on his collar proclaiming, "I am Chinese." As Henry knows all too well, those words aren't sufficient to safe him from taunts and bullying at the hands of his classmates. It is after all 1942, Seattle, and the beginning of World War Ii. Chinese or not, in the eyes of his Caucasian classmates, Henry is still "yellow."
Japanese School Girls
Isolated at home by parents who insist he speak English, which neither parent understands, and alienated at school by students, Henry finds his only friend in Keiko, a young Japanese girl. As scholarship students, the two work in the bistro during lunch and after school cleaning blackboards and erasers. They swiftly bond, and their friendship blossoms into young love.
Two obstacles stand in their way. Henry's father despises the Japanese for historical reasons, as well as Japan's brutality in its current war on China. Anything or thing tainted by Japanese blood is hated, so Henry must carry on his friendship in secret.
The second and far more serious obstacle for Henry and Keiko is the country's xenophobia in the wake of Pearl Harbor. It doesn't matter that Japanese Americans think of themselves as Americans first and, as Keiko insists, many like herself were born in American hospitals, speak no Japanese, and feel no allegiance toward Japan. Suspicion of Japanese spies and saboteurs is pervasive. And it gives nothing away in this story to say that Keiko and her house come to be victims of that suspicion.
The roundup scenes depicted in Bitter and Sweet are frightening and horrific, reminiscent of other roundups in European cities half-way colse to the world. Thankfully, this country's basic goodness ensured that, although taken unfairly, the interned Japanese Americans were treated humanely-at least in the camps. The record is hardly so good upon their return, when they found their properties, farms, and businesses sold out from under them. We recognize some of that in this novel as well.
Jamie Ford's novel moves gracefully, back and forth, in the middle of the two time frames-war years and four decades later, which is when a stash of Japanese-American belongings turns up in the basement of an old hotel. The middle-aged Henry is clear that something precious to him is to be found in those long-lost boxes and trunks-and he goes in crusade of it. Clearly, Henry is finding to reclaim a vital piece of of his own past. It is the satisfaction of this debut novel that we get to crusade along with him.
Book chronicle - Hotel at the corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford
ไม่มีความคิดเห็น:
แสดงความคิดเห็น