Gaeta1's review of Moloka'i > Likes and Comments
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Gaeta1 wrote: "I was very disappointed, too, as I had heard so many good reviews of the book."
It's certainly gotten alot of acclaim (unwarranted IMO), but we all have different reading tastes, and so many have enjoyed it.
I think that's because it is a tragic story plus people feel that they are learning something as well. Sometimes I think the satisfaction of reading about an "exotic culture" can be a trap as the reader (I include myself) is more likely to overlook faults in plot, characterization, or even basic writing technique.
Thank you for saving me from reading this book. It was on my "maybe" tbr but now I'm removing it. Historical fiction doesn't mean that the historical facts or any other facts are fiction. Kudos to you.
Gaeta1 wrote: "Sometimes I think the satisfaction of reading about an "exotic culture" can be a trap as the r..."
Yes, there is that.
I enjoy these type of culture clash novels very much, but if the writing isn't there, and the story lacks heart, then it's a lost opportunity.
I would certainly like to read a non-fiction account of the lepers of Moloka'i. I'm sure in the hands of a skilled writer this part of history would provide the kind of reading experience I was hoping for when I picked this up.
I can see your point about too much information and not tying it in perfectly and certainly I think your also right about the Asian adoption part of it as well, however even if close to impossible on that point, I think that wasn't near the main focus of the book and no person or author is infallible, overall to me it was a good worthwhile read, eye opening and some what informative, it was fiction overall so I was just happy that it was based on a lot of real history and was captivating and enjoyable enough! I'm no great critic when I read though but to me tossing this book aside over that point I think is an injustice!
If I hadn't been lukewarm to begin about the book I would agree, but I felt there were systemic problems with the book which came to a point with a plot twist that could not have happened. Every person has their own personal no-way-can I-accept-this moment, which is why we are all on GR to share.
@Hannah--the only other reading I've done on the colony on Molokai has been Father Damien centered. Maybe one of the many autobiographies written by the patients. "Footprints in the Sand" looks especially interesting.
Gaeta1 wrote: "I Mean "No Footprints in the Sand." NOt quuite the same thing!"
Thanks, I'll look for that at my library.
PC or not, thems is the facts. On the Korean side of my family, I have a great-uncle who ran an orphanage after the war. His own family reprimanded him for taking in the kids at first, and there was always a VERY clear delineation between his own family and the charity cases. I think it worked more like a homeless shelter than a traditional "orphanage" with kids drifting in and out... and he wound up profiting rather nicely from the donations given to the orphans-- but that's another story.
Thanks for your review. I was interested in your views on the adoption because as I thought about the book after I finished it, that part didn't hold true for me. That a Japanese family would adopt this child, especially when her Japanese father's own family would have nothing to do with her because of her leprosy, didn't ring true for me. It didn't ring true for me because the child had been born on Moloka'i, but then I dismissed it thinking that the adoptive family didn't know where she was born. And yet, her adoptive mother had to have known because she new her natural mother had no choice in giving her up. Ah well. Some members of my book club pointed out a similar mistake the author made in one of his brief mentions of the Mormon faith. It's a minor mistake and certainly not of huge import to the story, but speaks to the author's lack of research in some areas. Another member of book club is finding the book "boring". Just one reason I love book club; the opportunity to hear how different people react to a book. Thanks again for your insightful review.
Yes the correct name is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints and the leader would have been a branch president or a bishop not a pastor. I think it is believable that a Japanese mother who wanted a daughter so badly would adopt a child born on Molokai especially since she was five years old and healthy. I thought this book was beautifully written.
“It.Could.Never.Have.Happened. Not in a million years. Not today, and certainly not almost a hundred years ago. No issei peasant family would have adopted a child---especially a girl" Not in a million years? Really? Not even today? The current Mayor of Maui County's wife was adopted by an issei peasant family. This wasn't a hundred years ago (only 60) but it sure wasn't today either. How do I know this? She is my Auntie. You might even be able to google this "impossible" story.
No, it could NOT have happened. Not in a million years. Period. You have one personal modern story that is highly, highly, unusual, but you do not understand traditional Japanese society. (I do not know, by the way, if you are Japanese-American, since you speak of your Auntie, but I'm Italian-American, lived in Italy, studied in Rome, but wouldn't say that I understand everything Italian--particularly politics.)
The girl was born of "unclean" parents--perhaps even, for all the prospective adoptee parents knew, of the Buraku--she wasn't pure blooded-Japanese, and she was not even a boy. This plot twist was put in merely to shoehorn in Manzanar in the crudest possible way, so it really made me mad. (I have no explanation why he did this, other than it was another soap-opera development, or it was fashionable US bashing without understanding that other countries were much, much worse. Not that I don't think that the Japanese and Hawaiians were treated very poorly indeed, but there is no nuance in Brennert's book, or true and broad understanding of other cultures. It was thrown in to add a heavy-handed parallel of the two internments; and of course, Brennert had to have the family leave the islands since there was no imprisonment of the Japanese there; yet another contrivance.)
Were there a few highly rare cases of outside the bloodlines adoption--of pure blooded children of known parentage-- by turn of the century Japanese? Maybe--especially of children being used as drudges. If you are OK with the wildly improbable being introduced as the norm merely to give a story another cheap twist, that is your concern. I found this book contrived; you liked it, obviously, but I did not.
Again, when the orphanage that I had worked for had not had one adoption in 50 years, I use that as MY experience. Arguing about the literary merits of a book is one thing, but basic facts? And being rude? Not productive for me. You are blocked.
I feel the best way to support my position is to back up every statement I've made with outside sources. I hope this will be enough to convince people. You know, I would like Brennert's story to be plausible, that an open-minded, warm-hearted couple would take a little girl into their home. But people, it just could not have happened:
http://www.time.com/time/world/articl...
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles...
"...among the most adoption-adverse countries on earth..."
"...the reverence for bloodlines..."
http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/0...
Oh, and Japanese attitudes towards leprosy? With a national obsession about cleanliness, it is sadly not surprising that Japan was the last country in the world to abolish the quarantine of sufferers of Hansen's disease. Starting in turn of the century Japan--right when the little girl's adopted parents would have been raised--there was an official and draconian campaign by the government to irradicate the disease out of the pure Japanese bloodlines, and the victims were locked up until 1996:
http://articles.latimes.com/1996-06-3...
and babies-- hundreds of healthy babies--of the victims routinely killed up to the 1950's as it was believed to be hereditary:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacif...
It is highly unlikely that the parents of the adopted girl, newly arrived from Japan, would not have shared these prejudices that would have been part of a deliberate propaganda effort, particularly as they were uneducated, were raised in a land where societal pressures to conform are intense, and spent most of their time isolated on their farm after they left their native country.
...and the stigma continues:
http://community.seattletimes.nwsourc...
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20...
Note the point that Japanese do not adopt non-Japanese children. As in "practically unheard of." And this is now--attitudes were even stronger several generations ago.
And yes, being half-Japanese is not really "Japanese".
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid...
Please read this account of the half-Japanese boy, written two decades after the fictional adoption. Everyone jumped out of the bath as soon as he entered, and it was emptied and cleaned "as if it were contaminated."
This is happily NOT something that would happen nowadays (although I did have an American friend banned from a guest house by an old woman as "dame desu"--forbidden), so cultures CAN change, but that doesn't mean that a Japanese adoption of a foreign child would be seen--even today--as anything but completely outside societal norms and expectations. And half-caste Japanese and people of Japanese heritage (often even Japanese born in the country and returning home after years abroad) are still viewed as foreigners or just not "japanese enough." http://countrystudies.us/japan/55.htm , http://countrystudies.us/japan/54.htm
http://suite101.com/article/obstacles...
Note, too, the keen intent--indeed obsession--of making sure that anyone brought into a family has no problems of mind and body in the bloodlines. The koseki--the family record which is mandatory in Japan--is usually scrutinized by the families. And this is today, in a modern, educated society. Which I was--and am--very fond of, and left with great sadness.
I could go on, and demonstrate that the MOTHER'S wishes to adopt a child would have little relevance in an extremely patriarchal society, but I hope people will take my word for it. Enough is enough. Though I was cutting the author a bit too much slack. The information on negative attitudes on adoption took one minute to research.
I will make one more point. It would have been far more plausible for the little girl to have been adopted by a Hawaiian family; indeed, in traditional polynesian cultures, fostering was extremely common and there was not even a societal distinction between mother and maternal aunts. But Brennert, whose understanding of many social mores of Polynesian and Japanese culture is faulty--or did not allow a few facts to get in the way of more cheap, heart-rending manipulation--did not understand this truth.
Terrific review and I really appreciate your follow-up info in the comments section. I sort of wanted to read this but then I read a glowing review by a friend who tends to fall for those literary traps (tragedy, mary sue heroines, etc) so I hesitated to . I'm glad I read your comments because now I know not to even bother with this. I realize that historical fiction is fiction, but as someone else said in these comments, that does not mean that the history should be fiction, as well!
Yes, and I believe Brennert knew that he was laying down a line of BS. He did his research at the State Archives, and there's tons of government reports and original documents on the ethnography of the islands. Not that I ever managed to get over there, as I had babies at the time, but the main library downtown always had a revolving exhibit from the archives about cultural attitudes among the various groups that settled the islands, and I loved reading them.
I knew I didn't like this book after reading it for a book club, and you've managed to put my feelings into words with your excellent review. Thanks!
Not if a long, manipulative speech, filled with tears and hugs, is made at the end of a book about how the girl's life is enriched by having two mothers, and how it made everything OK. Why not have the little girl adopted by a Hawaiian family?
Here is my question: why shouldn't we expect the truth in such things? Why do people demand so little from their fiction? Why is it OK that truthfulness--as opposed to "truthiness"--is merely reserved for non-fiction? To make people feel good?
This is historical fiction Fiction means not necessarily true events and people. Even though there was some history in it does not mean that the whole book is factual. Read it as what it is, a novel. Not as an informal history about Hawaii. It is a great story, I personally loved it!!!
I think the line in historical fiction between "believable and/or well-researched enough to suspend disbelief" and "insulting to the intelligence" in historical fiction is different for everyone, and will be based a lot on the reader's familiarity with the subject matter being fictionalized.
Take "Da Vinci Code," for example. If you read it for plot twists and suspense, it's great. But if you know anything about Renaissance art/architecture, or the Knights Templar-- you'll be cringing so hard it'll be hard to read.
Yes, thank you, mermaid. Historical fiction, for me, has to remain true in spirit and in basic facts to the times portrayed. Of course there are going to be errors---it is impossible to avoid them. As I said, this is not a mistake about the length of a woman's skirt, but a distortion of how people really would have acted and felt in a particular time.
Towards the end of the book, the girl makes a big speech about how she found two mothers to love her. I found this emotional center of this book to be false, for the reasons I explained. Again, if she had had a Hawaiian adopted mother, this would have made sense, and I would have gone along with this heart-tugging reunion. But Brennert wanted to toss a bit of political propaganda into his book as well. And that is why I disliked the book.
This was all made clear in my review.
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Gaeta1 wrote: "I was very disappointed, too, as I had heard so many good reviews of the book."It's certainly gotten alot of acclaim (unwarranted IMO), but we all have different reading tastes, and so many have enjoyed it.
I think that's because it is a tragic story plus people feel that they are learning something as well. Sometimes I think the satisfaction of reading about an "exotic culture" can be a trap as the reader (I include myself) is more likely to overlook faults in plot, characterization, or even basic writing technique.
Thank you for saving me from reading this book. It was on my "maybe" tbr but now I'm removing it. Historical fiction doesn't mean that the historical facts or any other facts are fiction. Kudos to you.
Gaeta1 wrote: "Sometimes I think the satisfaction of reading about an "exotic culture" can be a trap as the r..."Yes, there is that.
I enjoy these type of culture clash novels very much, but if the writing isn't there, and the story lacks heart, then it's a lost opportunity.
I would certainly like to read a non-fiction account of the lepers of Moloka'i. I'm sure in the hands of a skilled writer this part of history would provide the kind of reading experience I was hoping for when I picked this up.
I can see your point about too much information and not tying it in perfectly and certainly I think your also right about the Asian adoption part of it as well, however even if close to impossible on that point, I think that wasn't near the main focus of the book and no person or author is infallible, overall to me it was a good worthwhile read, eye opening and some what informative, it was fiction overall so I was just happy that it was based on a lot of real history and was captivating and enjoyable enough! I'm no great critic when I read though but to me tossing this book aside over that point I think is an injustice!
If I hadn't been lukewarm to begin about the book I would agree, but I felt there were systemic problems with the book which came to a point with a plot twist that could not have happened. Every person has their own personal no-way-can I-accept-this moment, which is why we are all on GR to share.
@Hannah--the only other reading I've done on the colony on Molokai has been Father Damien centered. Maybe one of the many autobiographies written by the patients. "Footprints in the Sand" looks especially interesting.
Gaeta1 wrote: "I Mean "No Footprints in the Sand." NOt quuite the same thing!"Thanks, I'll look for that at my library.
PC or not, thems is the facts. On the Korean side of my family, I have a great-uncle who ran an orphanage after the war. His own family reprimanded him for taking in the kids at first, and there was always a VERY clear delineation between his own family and the charity cases. I think it worked more like a homeless shelter than a traditional "orphanage" with kids drifting in and out... and he wound up profiting rather nicely from the donations given to the orphans-- but that's another story.
Thanks for your review. I was interested in your views on the adoption because as I thought about the book after I finished it, that part didn't hold true for me. That a Japanese family would adopt this child, especially when her Japanese father's own family would have nothing to do with her because of her leprosy, didn't ring true for me. It didn't ring true for me because the child had been born on Moloka'i, but then I dismissed it thinking that the adoptive family didn't know where she was born. And yet, her adoptive mother had to have known because she new her natural mother had no choice in giving her up. Ah well. Some members of my book club pointed out a similar mistake the author made in one of his brief mentions of the Mormon faith. It's a minor mistake and certainly not of huge import to the story, but speaks to the author's lack of research in some areas. Another member of book club is finding the book "boring". Just one reason I love book club; the opportunity to hear how different people react to a book. Thanks again for your insightful review.
Yes the correct name is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints and the leader would have been a branch president or a bishop not a pastor. I think it is believable that a Japanese mother who wanted a daughter so badly would adopt a child born on Molokai especially since she was five years old and healthy. I thought this book was beautifully written.
“It.Could.Never.Have.Happened. Not in a million years. Not today, and certainly not almost a hundred years ago. No issei peasant family would have adopted a child---especially a girl" Not in a million years? Really? Not even today? The current Mayor of Maui County's wife was adopted by an issei peasant family. This wasn't a hundred years ago (only 60) but it sure wasn't today either. How do I know this? She is my Auntie. You might even be able to google this "impossible" story.
No, it could NOT have happened. Not in a million years. Period. You have one personal modern story that is highly, highly, unusual, but you do not understand traditional Japanese society. (I do not know, by the way, if you are Japanese-American, since you speak of your Auntie, but I'm Italian-American, lived in Italy, studied in Rome, but wouldn't say that I understand everything Italian--particularly politics.)The girl was born of "unclean" parents--perhaps even, for all the prospective adoptee parents knew, of the Buraku--she wasn't pure blooded-Japanese, and she was not even a boy. This plot twist was put in merely to shoehorn in Manzanar in the crudest possible way, so it really made me mad. (I have no explanation why he did this, other than it was another soap-opera development, or it was fashionable US bashing without understanding that other countries were much, much worse. Not that I don't think that the Japanese and Hawaiians were treated very poorly indeed, but there is no nuance in Brennert's book, or true and broad understanding of other cultures. It was thrown in to add a heavy-handed parallel of the two internments; and of course, Brennert had to have the family leave the islands since there was no imprisonment of the Japanese there; yet another contrivance.)
Were there a few highly rare cases of outside the bloodlines adoption--of pure blooded children of known parentage-- by turn of the century Japanese? Maybe--especially of children being used as drudges. If you are OK with the wildly improbable being introduced as the norm merely to give a story another cheap twist, that is your concern. I found this book contrived; you liked it, obviously, but I did not.
Again, when the orphanage that I had worked for had not had one adoption in 50 years, I use that as MY experience. Arguing about the literary merits of a book is one thing, but basic facts? And being rude? Not productive for me. You are blocked.
I feel the best way to support my position is to back up every statement I've made with outside sources. I hope this will be enough to convince people. You know, I would like Brennert's story to be plausible, that an open-minded, warm-hearted couple would take a little girl into their home. But people, it just could not have happened:http://www.time.com/time/world/articl...
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles...
"...among the most adoption-adverse countries on earth..."
"...the reverence for bloodlines..."
http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/0...
Oh, and Japanese attitudes towards leprosy? With a national obsession about cleanliness, it is sadly not surprising that Japan was the last country in the world to abolish the quarantine of sufferers of Hansen's disease. Starting in turn of the century Japan--right when the little girl's adopted parents would have been raised--there was an official and draconian campaign by the government to irradicate the disease out of the pure Japanese bloodlines, and the victims were locked up until 1996:
http://articles.latimes.com/1996-06-3...
and babies-- hundreds of healthy babies--of the victims routinely killed up to the 1950's as it was believed to be hereditary:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacif...
It is highly unlikely that the parents of the adopted girl, newly arrived from Japan, would not have shared these prejudices that would have been part of a deliberate propaganda effort, particularly as they were uneducated, were raised in a land where societal pressures to conform are intense, and spent most of their time isolated on their farm after they left their native country.
...and the stigma continues:
http://community.seattletimes.nwsourc...
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20...Note the point that Japanese do not adopt non-Japanese children. As in "practically unheard of." And this is now--attitudes were even stronger several generations ago.
And yes, being half-Japanese is not really "Japanese".
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid...
Please read this account of the half-Japanese boy, written two decades after the fictional adoption. Everyone jumped out of the bath as soon as he entered, and it was emptied and cleaned "as if it were contaminated."
This is happily NOT something that would happen nowadays (although I did have an American friend banned from a guest house by an old woman as "dame desu"--forbidden), so cultures CAN change, but that doesn't mean that a Japanese adoption of a foreign child would be seen--even today--as anything but completely outside societal norms and expectations. And half-caste Japanese and people of Japanese heritage (often even Japanese born in the country and returning home after years abroad) are still viewed as foreigners or just not "japanese enough." http://countrystudies.us/japan/55.htm , http://countrystudies.us/japan/54.htm
http://suite101.com/article/obstacles...
Note, too, the keen intent--indeed obsession--of making sure that anyone brought into a family has no problems of mind and body in the bloodlines. The koseki--the family record which is mandatory in Japan--is usually scrutinized by the families. And this is today, in a modern, educated society. Which I was--and am--very fond of, and left with great sadness.
I could go on, and demonstrate that the MOTHER'S wishes to adopt a child would have little relevance in an extremely patriarchal society, but I hope people will take my word for it. Enough is enough. Though I was cutting the author a bit too much slack. The information on negative attitudes on adoption took one minute to research.
I will make one more point. It would have been far more plausible for the little girl to have been adopted by a Hawaiian family; indeed, in traditional polynesian cultures, fostering was extremely common and there was not even a societal distinction between mother and maternal aunts. But Brennert, whose understanding of many social mores of Polynesian and Japanese culture is faulty--or did not allow a few facts to get in the way of more cheap, heart-rending manipulation--did not understand this truth.
Terrific review and I really appreciate your follow-up info in the comments section. I sort of wanted to read this but then I read a glowing review by a friend who tends to fall for those literary traps (tragedy, mary sue heroines, etc) so I hesitated to . I'm glad I read your comments because now I know not to even bother with this. I realize that historical fiction is fiction, but as someone else said in these comments, that does not mean that the history should be fiction, as well!
Yes, and I believe Brennert knew that he was laying down a line of BS. He did his research at the State Archives, and there's tons of government reports and original documents on the ethnography of the islands. Not that I ever managed to get over there, as I had babies at the time, but the main library downtown always had a revolving exhibit from the archives about cultural attitudes among the various groups that settled the islands, and I loved reading them.
I knew I didn't like this book after reading it for a book club, and you've managed to put my feelings into words with your excellent review. Thanks!
Not if a long, manipulative speech, filled with tears and hugs, is made at the end of a book about how the girl's life is enriched by having two mothers, and how it made everything OK. Why not have the little girl adopted by a Hawaiian family?Here is my question: why shouldn't we expect the truth in such things? Why do people demand so little from their fiction? Why is it OK that truthfulness--as opposed to "truthiness"--is merely reserved for non-fiction? To make people feel good?
This is historical fiction Fiction means not necessarily true events and people. Even though there was some history in it does not mean that the whole book is factual. Read it as what it is, a novel. Not as an informal history about Hawaii. It is a great story, I personally loved it!!!
I think the line in historical fiction between "believable and/or well-researched enough to suspend disbelief" and "insulting to the intelligence" in historical fiction is different for everyone, and will be based a lot on the reader's familiarity with the subject matter being fictionalized.Take "Da Vinci Code," for example. If you read it for plot twists and suspense, it's great. But if you know anything about Renaissance art/architecture, or the Knights Templar-- you'll be cringing so hard it'll be hard to read.
Yes, thank you, mermaid. Historical fiction, for me, has to remain true in spirit and in basic facts to the times portrayed. Of course there are going to be errors---it is impossible to avoid them. As I said, this is not a mistake about the length of a woman's skirt, but a distortion of how people really would have acted and felt in a particular time.Towards the end of the book, the girl makes a big speech about how she found two mothers to love her. I found this emotional center of this book to be false, for the reasons I explained. Again, if she had had a Hawaiian adopted mother, this would have made sense, and I would have gone along with this heart-tugging reunion. But Brennert wanted to toss a bit of political propaganda into his book as well. And that is why I disliked the book.
This was all made clear in my review.
This was such a disappointing novel in so many ways, I guess it's not surprising the author made such a mistake with that plotline just to provide context for one more bit of "info-dumping" he crammed in throughout the book at the expense of a moving story. Thanks for a meaningful (and instructional) review! :)