The Good Shufu: Finding Love, Self, and Home on the Far Side of the World by Tracy Slater (memoir)

This memoir took me awhile to get interested in. Reviewing a memoir is always tough, as you really don't want to appear to say, "I didn't like the book, your life is dull".  So I tend to be a bit more forgiving in reading one because they are putting themselves out there for all to see (and review!).

As it begins, Tracy has an ideal Boston life, surviving her family drama but in style: writing, teaching, shoe purchasing.  She has friends, a home, and all is well.  At this point, in her descriptions I found her a little annoying, condescending almost, just in her tone.  I'm not sure what set off that alarm in me but I hit a point where I thought, "Should I bother continuing?"

Yes, I needed to. Because in an impeccable work of writing, she manages to show us how she changes once she starts her new job.  This job involves working as a sort of business liaison/etiquette expert for Asian businessmen on the brink of going global. They already know English, but the particular social cues and protocols still need some working out.  In a dull classroom, she tries to explain the differences in conversational approaches and other things that are so different in the US from Asia.

She immediately falls for Toru, a Japanese businessman, and he is similarly smitten with her. Their relationship starts fast and grows exponentially.  The art of this is we see her transform in her words: just simple word choices and phrases are different from the pre-trip Tracy.  So instead of her describing herself as having changed, we see it evolving already without being told.  I was really impressed with this: usually you have the memoir writer explaining their transition verbally.  She doesn't.  The explanation is visible as she simply talks about who she and Toru have become.

The biggest problem to meet them isn't their affection, but the division of society's lifestyles between her home place and his.  Knowing they are in this for the long haul, she has to imagine if she can leave her beloved Boston or if he should move with her.  It's not as simple as thinking "love conquers all".  There is more than geographical change: the culture change is much greater.  Japanese society often (not always) features women that are more passive and submissive than the upper-class, college-educated independent academic that Tracy is.  They are well-educated too, but the social niceties are more subtle- less forthrightness, less group activities, and even a way of keeping their eyes downcast in submission.  I could see how huge this variance would be for me, and I'm a mild person. Many women I know would be about as welcome as Godzilla with their American manners and abrupt and forceful personalities.

Fortunately, Tracy and Toru are willing to try and work it out.  Give and take. All those self-help book advice mantras are suddenly put in play.  Can they find a way to honor his family and retain her love of American culture? All or nothing?

As I read this, I wish it had pictures. Toru sounds so handsome, and Tracy (I saw her picture) is lovely.  I'd like to see them together.  So few memoirs feature pictures!   In any case, I really enjoyed exploring the ups and downs of their relationship. At one point, as they're sleeping, she realizes for once she can relax and simply "be".  That's something hard to find, that everyone wants.  Someone with whom they can "be".

And for emphasis, I have to repeat that the way she writes is so compelling regarding the personal transformation in her beliefs and attitudes. I can't wait to see if she writes more: I'd like to see her do this with a character and show us (not tell) how they change and grow.  It's a beautiful skill and one I don't notice often in a memoir.  The last few I've read were overbearing in their author's explaining themselves, as if they were defensive and being interviewed on Dr. Phil. This one flows much more naturally and more intensely simply by her use of events and actions rather than exposition.

Review copy provided to Amazon Vine

by GP Putnam's Sons, and releases today, June 30, 2015.

New World of Indigenous Resistance, Noam Chomsky

When is multiculturalism a bad thing? Could the answer have anything to do with literature? The new book, New World of Indigenous Resistance, examines this concept in a way that not only fascinates but educates.

The book focuses on South America’s regions, and has a series of essays discussing issues that face an area largely unknown by those in the U.S. Usually we only hear of earthquakes or small regional clashes that mean nothing to us, but there’s far more to explore. Author and historian Noam Chomsky discusses the essays featured as well as including his own thoughts on the complexities of the region. The South American continent is not simply a mass of Latino culture, but a huge collection of tribes and peoples. What happens there ultimately affects the rest of the world, and outside influences have been hugely detrimental to both the people and the land.

The primary problem faced is one of global corporations and governments arriving to extract resources, reestablish political boundaries, and ultimately combine the people into one more manageable mass. One essay, “Resistance and Cultural Work in Times of War,” by Elsie Rockwell in Mexico discusses the nature of multiculturalism and how it doesn’t benefit the native people at all. For example, international funding promotes a “intercultural” education that lumps all indigenous people into one category, then attempts to teach them in one, streamlined manner. This ignores their personal heritage and virtually eliminates it from the curriculum. Then, in an effort to offer variety under the guise of multiculturalism, they split the students into gifted, ‘special ed’ and ‘migrant’ groups. It is odd that the ‘migrant’ students are actually lifetime residents of the same community where the school is located. Where exactly have they migrated from? Rockwell’s primary assertion against this method is “the current economic order globalizes barbarism: it fabricates poverty, destroys nature, and militarizes other regions.” The one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t respect the distinct differences between the indigenous people, and thus their voice in art, music, and literature is also lost.

Another essay, “Beyond Education”, by Gustavo Esteva in Mexico, examines the attitude of tolerance and its hidden agenda. He discusses how the US prides itself on being a melting pot of cultures, but this melting pot mentality actually just attempts to “to dissolve, each one of the multiple immigrant cultures.” He asserts that the term “salad bowl” would be a more accurate and positive term, one that respects the individual heritage and culture behind native people and promotes such diversity. Thus, the literature and poetry of other places can continue to thrive instead of dying out. As the US gets involved in South America for mining and energy projects, they often use their influence and funds to promote a similar mentality. The problem is, this homogenization of culture also makes it far easier to exploit and manipulate the people within, and the authors of the essays are addressing such concerns.

Chomsky discusses this further in his interview, featured at the end of the book, where he explains that “the demeaning of others translates into subordination internal to the community. So war is the extreme case. You demean and demonize the enemy to the point where you want to destroy him, but you also accept that you are totally controlled at home. You subordinate yourself to your own state to try and destroy the enemy state, while they are subordinating themselves to their state.” This attitude gives great power to a few large nations and the smaller die out. He applies this to literature when he states that “the main themes of the great antiwar novels after the First World War was the idiocy of essentially the same people in the trenches on both sides slaughtering each other, each committed to a power system that was oppressing them.” Thus he concludes that rather than embracing oneness, a healthy respect for the individuals of other places, along with their culture and history, is good for everyone and provides a wealth of experience that enriches what we see and read. 

Special thanks to Stacey of City Lights Books for the Review Copy.

The Lost Art of Reading, LA Times article

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/arts/la-ca-reading9-2009aug09,0,4905017.story

Great article by David L. Ulin that sums up why so few people read these days. The only thing I would add is that many times kids are pushed to read for information rather than pleasure, so it becomes a chore. Few people have been taught to enjoy the journey rather than just the destination.

Excerpt:
So what happened? It isn't a failure of desire so much as one of will. Or not will, exactly, but focus: the ability to still my mind long enough to inhabit someone else's world, and to let that someone else inhabit mine. Reading is an act of contemplation, perhaps the only act in which we allow ourselves to merge with the consciousness of another human being. We possess the books we read, animating the waiting stillness of their language, but they possess us also, filling us with thoughts and observations, asking us to make them part of ourselves. This is what Conroy was hinting at in his account of adolescence, the way books enlarge us by giving direct access to experiences not our own. In order for this to work, however, we need a certain type of silence, an ability to filter out the noise.

Such a state is increasingly elusive in our over-networked culture, in which every rumor and mundanity is blogged and tweeted. Today, it seems it is not contemplation we seek but an odd sort of distraction masquerading as being in the know. Why? Because of the illusion that illumination is based on speed, that it is more important to react than to think, that we live in a culture in which something is attached to every bit of time.

...What I'm struggling with is the encroachment of the buzz, the sense that there is something out there that merits my attention, when in fact it's mostly just a series of disconnected riffs and fragments that add up to the anxiety of the age.