Haunted by Waters: A Journey through Race and Place in the American West

by Robert T. Hayashi

Even though race influenced how Americans envisioned, represented, and shaped the American West, discussions of its history devalue the experiences of racial and ethnic minorities. In this lyrical history of marginalized peoples in Idaho, Robert T. Hayashi views the West from a different perspective by detailing the ways in which they shaped the western landscape and its meaning. As an easterner, researcher, angler, and third-generation Japanese American traveling across the contemporary Idaho landscape—where his grandfather died during internment during World War II—Hayashi reconstructs a landscape that lured emigrants of all races at the same time its ruling forces were developing cultured processes that excluded nonwhites. Throughout each convincing and compelling chapter, he searches for the stories of dispossessed minorities as patiently as he searches for trout. Using a wide range of materials that include memoirs, oral interviews, poetry, legal cases, letters, government documents, and even road signs, Hayashi illustrates how Thomas Jefferson’s vision of an agrarian, all-white, and democratic West affected the Gem State’s Nez Perce, Chinese, Shoshone, Mormon, and particularly Japanese residents. Starting at the site of the Corps of Discovery’s journey into Idaho, he details the ideological, aesthetic, and material manifestations of these intertwined notions of race and place. As he ?y-?shes Idaho’s fabled rivers and visits its historical sites and museums, Hayashi reads the contemporary landscape in light of this evolution.

214 pages, Paperback

First published August 15, 2007

Reviews

[Lisa]

I really wanted to like this book, but I think it was a little shallow. I wanted both more from the memoir, more from the juxtaposed histories, and more haunting by waters.

[sdw]

Robert T. Hayashi’s Haunted by Waters: A Journey through Race and Place in the American West (2007) blends academic insight with autobiography. He grounds his text in the topography of Idaho but reaches outward to suggest the centrality of race to the landscape of the larger U.S. West. He traces the responses of Lewis and Clark from Idaho into Oregon in relation to Jefferson’s ideas about nation, race, and agrarianism. In contrast to the traditional views of the U.S. West landscape he offers the relationship of Chinese and Japanese inhabitants of Idaho, Native Americans, and Mormons. Through the book he discusses his own relationship to fishing and his own family history. I imagine the autobiographical aspects would allow this book to work well with an undergraduate audience. Hayashi also does a beautiful job expressing the complexity of race and the U.S. West landscape in accessible manner. As he mentions, Asian American perspectives on the environment and the role of Asian Americans in transforming the US West environment are seldom mentioned, making the contribution of his book more valuable.

[Kristen]

Turns out that Minidoka, another camp like Manzanar, sounds very like a Japanese expression for "How's it going?" Imagine arriving at How's it Going Relocation Center (for Japanese Americans Forced to Leave Their West Coast Homes). This was a good, quick read filled with good, quick insights.