BOOK INFORMATION
Title: Why She Left Us
Author: Rahna Reiko Rizzuto
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Price:
$13.00 Pages: 295
Rating: 9
Original by JACOB LIAO/Daily Bruin Web Adaptation by Hernane Tabay/Daily Bruin Senior Staff
By Sharon Hori
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
The 50th reunion of Amache, an internment camp in Colorado that housed thousands of Japanese Americans during World War II, became more than a weekend for former internees to share their camp experiences.
The 1992 visit became an inspiration for Rahna Reiko Rizzuto to begin her first novel.
Rizzuto, born to a Japanese mother and a half-Italian/Irish father, resurrected her fictional novel “Why She Left Us” after she and her mother returned to Amache. The result of a year’s worth of research – including interviews with 15 Japanese-Americans and camp stories of former internees – “Why She Left Us” is a twisted hybrid of love, fear, loyalty and abandonment during three generations of Japanese American ancestry.
Reciting the awkward story of the Okada family could never seem more natural at the brink of war, when the United States precariously developed a national disdain toward its Japanese adversaries. Rizzuto’s novel extracts the turmoil embedded in war and its effects on family life.
Japanese tradition dominates the Okada family, since “issei” parents Mitsuo and Kaori – first-generation immigrants of Japanese descent – were arranged to be married before they had ever met. The post-Pearl Harbor incarceration of Japanese Americans at relocation centers during the early ’40s often united parents with their children – but not for the Okadas.
Emi, who struggles with her family’s disapproval after secretly conceiving two illegitimate children, becomes the center of gossip in the community and the center of disgrace for her relatives. After Emi’s shame is exposed and she tearfully confesses that she gave her first child, Eric, up for adoption, Kaori is already on a quest to retrieve him. Legality and birthright become oil and water, and the blood of family is thicker than the ink on the adoption papers.
The underlying lesson becomes clear: the pride that flows through the family’s umbilical cord must be salvaged at any cost. Yet in attempt to escape the disgrace that Emi has brought, fleeing seems to be the only solution that will avoid conflict.
Watching the family grow up and grow apart becomes a sad metamorphosis, almost like watching grass mutate into weeds. Children crawl into cocoons of self-consciousness and isolation, only to leave confused about their identities. The readers, however, will journey through the novel and escape touched but unharmed, changed but appreciative.
“Why She Left Us” succeeds in its endeavors to deliver the experience of living during the war as a Japanese American. The family maintains strict ideals of unconditional love and loyalty, but the government proposes threats to arrest and detain Japanese American citizens who oppose their country. The war becomes a catalyst for the family’s demise. The real emotional tearing happens when the strained family needs each others’ support, but ironically the characters choose to become more distant.
Generations are woven together in a thread of secrets. “There are secrets that are hard to keep and secrets that are hard to tell. And, in our family, there are so many because we never told the truth. It was something we never wanted to do, to understand what had happened to our lives,” Kaori recalls.
In revealing the family’s hidden emotions and judgments, the characters writhe in pride, shame and dishonesty. The story moves from fictional to historical, from historical to authentic.
Emi’s secrets are pieced together by the whirlwind of characters most greatly impacted by her actions – her mother, her brother and her two children. The four narrators help shape the awkwardness of family life, when unconditional loyalty clashes with unfortunate disgrace. They add honesty and insight that enhance the novel’s completeness.
The biographical story remains least understood for Emi’s daughter, Mariko, who cannot comprehend why her mother has secrets so private she cannot even reveal the identity of her biological father. Thus, a weakened Mariko is forced to grow up isolated, later learning she was born in the internment camp, not knowing she had a brother.
Rizzuto keeps readers captivated not by reciting the downfall of the Okada family, but instead by allowing their ongoing conflicts – miscommunication, inability to admit failure or mistake – to remain unresolved. The story delves into the family secrets and generation gaps that keeps their relationships uncomfortably distant, and Rizzuto entices a denouement to bring closure along with the war.
And it works. Rizzuto’s technique to push the limits of comfortable living leaves no truth unturned. She weaves empathy through the pages of her work to clothe the naked truth about a part of American culture that brewed shame and hatred. The novel preys hungrily on drama and history, and readers will leave well-nourished and satisfied.