Quote

"Keep working on a plan. Make no little plans. Make the biggest you can think of, and spend the rest of your life carrying it out." Harry S. Truman

Monday, May 19, 2008

My Global Bookshelf : "Losing Kei" by Suzanne Kamata



One of the beauties of blogging is that you get to "meet" interesting people you'd probably never run into otherwise. Suzanne Kamata is an expatriate writer whose blog, Gaijin Mama, allows its readers a glimpse into the life of an American mother and wife bringing up twins on an island in rural Japan. Her work has appeared in numerous publications, and she is the editor of the anthologies, The Broken Bridge: Fiction from Expatriates in Literary Japan, and Love You to Pieces: Creative Writers on Raising a Child with special needs.

In her first novel, Losing Kei, published by Leapfrog Press, Suzanne Kamata tells the story of Jill Parker, an American artist who marries a Japanese man. Unfortunately, try as she may to meet the demands of Japanese traditional society, and in spite of the birth of a beautiful son, Kei, she ends up divorcing. Thus begins her struggle to remain in her son's life, as Japanese divorce law does not recognize shared custody and the parent not granted custody is expected to disappear entirely from the life of the child.

The novel's protagonist is a complex, multidimensional character; she can move the reader to tears, one moment - especially when she expresses her passion for her son - and slightly irritate, the following. In fact, I could never quite decide whether I liked her or not. When I asked the author how she felt about her character, she replied that Jill Parker is "passionate, but imperfect. I wanted to create a character who got into trouble on her own, and then found a way to redeem herself. I didn't want her to be simply a victim. She's young and impulsive at the start of events, but she eventually gets her act together."

The book is much more than a fascinating introduction to Japanese culture. It is the journey to maturity of a sensitive, not quite "finished" young woman through an harrowing experience. Something that Jill realizes herself toward the end of the story: "I was born into a middle class family, in a prosperous, peaceful country. There was no obvious war to protest, no important cause that caught my attention. But I had wanted to suffer. I was so young then. Look what happened to me. I no longer had to borrow misery. I'd created it all by myself."

In spite of my reservations about Jill Parker, or maybe because of them, I enjoyed reading Losing Kei. It is a sensitive work, elegantly written, and always respectful of the culture it depicts.

Suzanne Kamata was kind enough to answer a few questions.

How did the inspiration for "Losing Kei" come to you?

I first read an article 10-15 years ago about expatriate parents who'd lost custody of their children to their Japanese ex-spouses and who were then denied access to their children. One of the parents interviewed was a woman journalist who, apparently, lost custody because she was a working woman. Her ex and his new wife gradually turned her son against her, so that he no longer wanted to have anything to do with his mother. I thought that this would be an interesting subject to explore in fiction. In Japan there is no such thing as joint custody, and this sort of thing actually happens quite a bit - to Japanese as well as foreigners.

What would you say has changed you about living in Japan?

I have become comfortable with being an outsider. And I suppose I have learned to appreciate a certain amount of frugality. Living in the U.S. is very comfortable - entire houses are heated, so you can go from room to room without being cold. Here, we heat one room at a time in winter, but it's more ecological, less wasteful.

How about becoming a mother in Japan? Do you find that you have assimilated aspects of your host country's culture, or do both cultures, the American and the Japanese, remain separate?

When I first came here, I said that I would never sleep with my children, and I thought that the idea of fathers bathing with their little daughters was perverse, but we slept with our kids till they were about four, and my husband has taken a bath with them until recently.
In some respects, I remain American. The Japanese tend to stick to traditional gender roles, but I encourage my son to help in the kitchen and read books that might be considered girly, and I like it that my daughter is proud of her biceps.

Thank you, Suzanne, and best of luck to "Losing Kei."

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

You make me wanna buy it !!

Katia said...

Hey, Jo Ann. Go ahead, then :) Je n'ai pas eu le temps de te répondre, mais j'ai trouvé ton dernier poème très touchant.

Anonymous said...

Well, I've added it to my wish list on Amazon ;-)

Et merci :-)

Annette Gulati said...

Hey, Katia. I'm tagging you again. Check my blog for the rules.

Janet Brown said...

Hi Katia,
I read Leaving Kei a couple of months ago and thought it was quite interesting. Thanks for your mini-interview which expands my feelings about the book immensely--and thanks for the link to gaijinmama!
Janet

Katia said...

Janet, it's always a pleasure to read your comments. And you're fast. That book came out about a couple months ago, if I'm not mistaken :)

Janet Brown said...

It was in my neighborhood book store on a day that I felt very winter-laden--it looked interesting AND was in paperback, so it came home with me.
Katia, thank you so much for putting Tonedeaf on your list of blogs!

Katia said...

Janet, you're most welcome. I kept thinking about it, but usually when I was not seating in front of the computer. And then, when I was, I forgot. I love your blogger's "voice" and can't wait to discover your own book. When is it coming out, by the way?

Linda Austin said...

Hi Katia, is that Suzanne Kamata from the JapanVisitor website? That Suzanne reviews books and did one on the first edition of mine.

Katia said...

Hello, Linda. Suzanne seems to be very active in the writers' community in Japan, and I doubt there are many Suzanne Kamatas around, so chances are it's her :)