One Can Think About Life After the Fish Is in the Canoe: And Other Coastal Sketches/Beyond Manzanar: Views of Asian-American Womanhood

by James D. Houston

Book by James D. Houston, Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston

65 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1985

About the author

James Houston is the author of 8 novels and several nonfiction books. His work includes Snow Mountain Passage and Farewell to Manzanar.

Reviews

[sdw · Rating 3 out of 5]

I only read the essays by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston. The first two essays deal with her ideas about Asian American womanhood. "Beyond Manzanar" addresses her mother and the gendered family dynamics she experienced. She writes, "This attitude, that to serve meant to love, became an integral part of my psychological make-up and a source for confusion when I later began to relate to men" (13). The second essay, "The geisha, The Good Wife, and Me" discusses Houston's sense that two Japanese roles for women - wife and geisha - have collided in one confusing Western amalgamation. She continues her search to understand her own beliefs about gender roles as emerging from both an American and Japanese perspective. The third essay is a quick discussion of her first taste of snow. The last two essays are two chapters she collectively labels "Chiba" from a novel she was working on in 1985 called (i) Picture Bride (/i). The second chapter is almost identical to a chapter that appears in her much later novel (i) The Legend of the Fire Horse Woman (/i). Chiba, whose background is described in part in the first chapter, is a significant background character in (i) The Legend of the Fire Horse Woman (/i)