Picture Bride Research Articles

Body and Female Subjectivity in Cathy Song’s Picture Bride

Identified as a Hawaiian, a Korean-American, or a Chinese-American Poet, Cathy Song was born to a Korean-American father and a Chinese-American mother in 1955 in Honolulu, where she has spent most ...

The Limits of Americanism and Democracy: Korean Americans, Transnational Allegiance, and the Question of Loyalty on the Homefront during World War II

On the fateful morning of December 7, 1941, Koreans in Hawai'i received the news of the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor with mixed emotions. One Korean woman, who came to Hawai'i as a picture bride in 1919, cried when she first heard the news. Some tears were for joy and some for sadness, she recalled. was first of all happy because America was at last on our side against the Japanese; and then I was sad thinking about the boys who were being killed.While Americans coped with the shock, Koreans in Hawai'i and the continental United States saw the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor as confirmation of Japanese imperial ambitions and brutality they knew all too well. After many years of failed attempts to fight off Japanese imperial power, Korea had been officially colonized by Japan in 1910. Responding to the political events unfolding in Korea, over 7,000 pioneer Korean immigrants who came to Hawai.i as plantation laborers beginning in 1903 actively launched a Korean nationalist movement well ...

MAKABE, Tomoko, PICTURE BRIDES: Japanese Women in Canada

MAKABE, Tomoko, PICTURE BRIDES: Japanese Women in Canada. North York, Ontario: Multicultural History Society of Ontario, 1995, 180 pp., $24.95 softcover This is an English translation of a book first written in Japanese by a young Japanese woman, Tomoko Makabe. Her research into the life histories of five elderly issei (first generation) immigrant through interviews is a sentimental journey. She sees herself as someone who has followed in their footsteps by immigrating to Canada as a student, becoming one of the shinissei, or new first generation immigrants. Occasionally Japanese stereotypes of Japan persist in some of the general commentary, such as the proclaimed projection of Japanese homogeneity as an essentialized Japanese trait even among those in Canada. The wealth of this book is in the oral narratives of five Japanese immigrant women's lives. As women (born in the Meiji era, 1868-1911) they prove that Meiji did not always conform to the good wife, wise mother ideal. Despite Japanese notions that are totally devoted to the home, these are working women. They worked because they wanted to, and also out of necessity. In this small sample, there are two who divorce. Of those who stay married, one leaves her three children in Japan to free her for work. In another case the couple hide the wife's paid work from the husband's family. Clearly these were who did not necessarily stay tied to marriages, nor to total involvement in the domestic sphere, or with their children. Despite images that Japanese culture has always expected excessive maternal involvement, these examples reveal an alternate reality, encapsulated in the Japanese proverb, ova ga naku to mo, ko wa sodatsu (even though the parent is not there, the child grows up). These life histories reveal much about Japanese customs of the time, the persistence of these in issei communities in Canada, and shifts toward a sense of Japanese Canadian identity. Many picture brides were married in Japan to absent husbands through the Japanese practice of proxy marriage. The phenomenon ofAmerican village among immigrants is presented. This refers to communities initially seen as extensions of communities or regions in Japan. As the women's lives progress there is a gradual lessening of the constraints upon them as individuals expected in Japan. The talk of personal traits they believe result from their early socialization in Japan. …

Cultural convergences in Cathy song's poetry

Coming from deeply rooted oral and literary traditions in American, Asian American and Pacific Rim communities, the first collection of poet Cathy Song attracted immediate attention. Winner of the 1982 Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize, Picture Bride and Song's two subsequent volumes have garnered attention ever since. Her work reflects the experience of women in traditional and contemporary cultures; it examines an East—West heritage. Her poetry configures the state of American literature today, a state invigorated by cultural infusion. Song is a highly visual poet; her use of metaphor and music reveals her as a consummate craftswoman.

Picture Bride by Yoshiko Uchida

Picture Bride by Yoshiko Uchida

Brendan Prairie by Dan O’Brien

Reviews 413 finding a suitable mate agreeable to the long, hard journey to America ending with marriage to a virtual stranger. It is here where the story of twenty-one-yearold Hana Omiya begins in Yoshiko Uchida’s novel, Picture Bride. The arrival of women such as Hana changed the community of Japanese America from pre­ dominantly bachelor laborers to fam ilies seeking permanent settlement. W hile the literary theme of separation is widespread, almost a necessity throughout western historical fiction, the raw edge of Japanese-American histo­ ry is particularly rife with involuntary and unplanned disconnection. In her story spanning Hana’s life from 1917 through 1943, Uchida illustrates this severance with simple grace in many ways, clim axing at Topaz, a World War II internment camp in the Utah desert. Because readers are perhaps most familiar with racism regarding Native Americans, Uchida’s novel is an important voice for expelling the myth of “give me your tired, your poor” and the conception that all settlers follow ed a compass pointing westward. Unadorned by unnecessary complexity of subplot and m otive, the book carries readers along by the strong, emotional undertow of Hana and Taro’s conjoined life in Oakland, a life more often heart­ breaking than triumphant. If the sim plicity of the story is its strength, it is also its weakness. Readers would do w ell to further research the times of Hana and Taro’s fam ily and friends using other authoritative sources for a greater historical understanding. However, Picture Bride stands solidly as deeply felt narrative, a tale of admirable resiliency in spite of tragic and unjust circumstances. K a t h ie M e y e r P u l l m a n , Wa s h in g t o n Brendan Prairie. By Dan O ’Brien. (Riverside, New Jersey: Scribner’s, 1996. 255 pages, $22.00.) Dan O ’Brien’s latest novel might be called an eco-mystery. Its opening chapter introduces Special Agent Margaret Adamson of the United States Fish and W ildlife Service, a woman of many talents and as many virtues who returns to South Dakota from Colorado to give her yea or nay to Andy Arnold’s plan to fill six hundred acres of pristine meadowland with condominiums and a 220room hotel. The first chapter also mentions B ill Malone, Agent Adamson’s old friend and flame. Once an ardent and influential environmentalist dedicated to protecting gyrfalcons, M alone is burned out, physically and em otionally maimed, and at war with him self and his past. Finally, the first chapter ends with a monkey-wrenching murder that stops Andy Arnold short, casts suspicion on M alone, and sends Agent Adamson in search of both lost love and eco-terrorists. Brendan P rairie is a good but predictable mystery. O ’Brien’s plot has suffi­ cient twists and turns to engage most readers, and he deftly avoids the red her­ rings that plague too many contemporary mysteries. Occasionally, flashbacks that 414 Western American Literature seem related to Agent Adamson’s murder investigation merely offer information about the past she and the prime suspect, Malone, have in common. Also, a few of the supporting cast— in particular, the self-sacrificing Cooney Jenkins and the too-precious gay couple who runs a local casino— are flat, stock characters. What is especially worthwhile, however, is the falconry. O ’Brien’s passion­ ate descriptions of M alone nursing an injured gyrfalcon and the numerous pages given over to descriptions of falcons in training, falcons in flight, and falcons in attack are inspiring, informative, and quite simply, fun to read. Arguably as much a book about environmental protection as murder, as much about the ancient art of falconry as land development, Brendan Prairie clearly attempts too much in too few pages. Still, Dan O’Brien tells a good yarn, his love o f wild America is contagious, and his knowledge o f birds o f prey is captivating. R o b e r t H e a d l e y I ' S o u t h e r n S ta te C o m m u n it y C o l...

Picture Brides and Murder: Teaching with Student Family Histories

Picture Brides and Murder: Teaching with Student Family Histories

Picture Bride by Yoshiko Uchida

374 Western American Literature out of this town,” Duane remarks. “I guess they think they can go fast enough to escape gravity and get in orbit somewhere else. But mostly they just turn around and come back.” Their return in Texasville seems rather unfortunate. ANN RONALD University of Nevada, Reno Picture Bride. ByYoshiko Uchida. (Flagstaff, Arizona: Northland Press, 1987. 216 pages, $14.95.) Among Japanese pioneer immigrants, most marriages were arranged by matchmakers. There was no courtship, no romancing; but an exchange of photographs helped in the decision-making deliberations. This fictional por­ trayal of such a marriage begins with a vivid description of one picture bride, Hana Omiya, age 21, as she crosses the ocean in 1917 to marry Taro Takeda, age 31, the son of a friend of a relative. Hana has only a teen-age picture of Taro. His already balding head startles her when they meet at the dock. After a Christian wedding, Hana survives few triumphs and many tragedies as she adjusts to a puzzling life in America. The story ends in Topaz (a World War II internment camp in the Utah desert) where Hana emerges to face an unknown future after a final tragedy. With dignity and compassion, the Japanese-American author gently steers the reader away from the stereotype expressed in May 1942 by Chase Clark, then governor of Idaho, when he said, “Japs live like rats, breed like rats, and act like rats.” Hana and Taro live in an all-white (though unfriendly), middle-class neighborhood in Oakland, California. They raise only one child. Hana fixes oatmeal for breakfast. She bakes cakes. But for dinner, she reverts to a menu of rice, bamboo shoots, broiled eel, and the notorious malodorous pickled Japanese radish (daikon). The reader familiar with earlier Japanese-American literature may be interested in the different portrayals of the immigrant woman as described by writers in the 1920s, 50s, and 80s. For example, in 1928 Etsu Inagaki Sugimoto, of Columbia University, wrote Daughter of the Samurai, a charming in-depth autobiography telling of her childhood, her arrival in the eastern United States as a bride, and her integration into white society. In an area where there were no other Japanese among the intelligentsia, she was a novelty and a curiosity, happily exchanging and sharing cultural ideas with her receptive all-white neighbors and friends. A generation and a war later, in 1953, Monica Sone (Kazuko Itoi) wrote in Nisei Daughter of her early life in Seattle, her later incarceration in Minidoka Camp (near Jerome, Idaho) during World War II, and her eventual relocation in the Midwest. In terms of the Japanese-American attitude of the day, Sone wrote with tolerance and resigned acceptance of how her family survived the years of prejudice. Sone interpreted her mother’ssocial blunders as embarrassing but humorous incidents. It was not yet a time for ethnic pride. Reviews 375 In 1982, illuminated by civil rights and women’s lib, Yoshiko Uchida wrote Desert Exile, in which she described the intolerable suffering of her family as victims of prejudice in an all-white neighborhood in Berkeley, and their eventual incarceration in Topaz Camp. Sone and Uchida, both born circa 1920, had immigrant mothers who were daughters of Samurai and whose marriages were arranged for them. Now, in Picture Bride, Uchida has written in a language today’s reader can more easily identify with. The beautiful Hana is a daughter of a Samurai, a composite of the author’s mother and other women who arrived before 1920 and survived the years of public misunderstanding. With insight, pathos, and deep understanding, the author, in her graceful, dignified way, dares to expose Hana as a long-suffering, independent, assertive woman who is frustrated and stifled as she struggles to adjust to a hostile culture that is blind to her sense of values. For the reader who does not wish to be drowned in historical detail, this novel is a welcome diversion from the ethnic oral histories and non-fiction books now on the market. SUSAN SUNADA Logan, Utah Antelope Springs. By G. Clifton Wisler. (New York: Walker and Company, 1986. 187 pages, $14.95.) This juvenile Western deserves praise...

Antelope Springs by G. Clifton Wisler

Reviews 375 In 1982, illuminated by civil rights and women’s lib, Yoshiko Uchida wrote Desert Exile, in which she described the intolerable suffering of her family as victims of prejudice in an all-white neighborhood in Berkeley, and their eventual incarceration in Topaz Camp. Sone and Uchida, both born circa 1920, had immigrant mothers who were daughters of Samurai and whose marriages were arranged for them. Now, in Picture Bride, Uchida has written in a language today’s reader can more easily identify with. The beautiful Hana is a daughter of a Samurai, a composite of the author’s mother and other women who arrived before 1920 and survived the years of public misunderstanding. With insight, pathos, and deep understanding, the author, in her graceful, dignified way, dares to expose Hana as a long-suffering, independent, assertive woman who is frustrated and stifled as she struggles to adjust to a hostile culture that is blind to her sense of values. For the reader who does not wish to be drowned in historical detail, this novel is a welcome diversion from the ethnic oral histories and non-fiction books now on the market. SUSAN SUNADA Logan, Utah Antelope Springs. By G. Clifton Wisler. (New York: Walker and Company, 1986. 187 pages, $14.95.) This juvenile Western deserves praise on three counts. First, it introduces young people up to the age of fifteen to superior western fiction; second, it teaches them a western American ethic; and third, it shows adult readers and writers how a good juvenile Western may hold its own against the trashy paperback productions in the field. The action is laid in 1881 in an area west of Fort Worth, Texas, with verifiable names of places and historical events preceding the action proper. Only the novel’s central locale, the Overland way station at Antelope Springs, is a fictional blend of the real Antelope and Mineral Wells. Since the land was wrested from the Comanches seven years before and the wild days of the cattle drives belong to the past, the next step for the consolidation of civilization is the establishment of law and order. The religious overtones in the setting (“Calvary Hill,” “Trinity,” “three perpetually bubbling springs”) steer the plot in a direction which makes this a Sunday school Western couched in the format of a morality play or a Puritan captivity tale with genre-specific stereo­ typed characters and touches of realism and psychology. Though the narrative point of view is largely third-person omniscient, the central intelligence parts enable the reader to share the thoughts, dreams, visions and nightmares of the family in captivity on Calvary Hill, aptly named for their trial and anguish. Much of the book is taken up by slow-paced delib­ 376 Western American Literature erations, as well as tears and prayers. Where point of view creates psycho­ logical suspense, language adds a realistic touch, especially in western phrases and imagery. The book combines narrative technique with ideological message in such a way that the young reader can both enjoy a good story and be imbued with major ideas of the American creed. PETER BISCHOFF University of Munster, Germany The Haunted Mesa. By Louis L’Amour. (New York: Bantam Books, 1987. 357 pages, $18.95.) This is Louis L’Amour’s 86th novel (and 102nd book), and is in the tradition of his supernatural novels The Californios and The Lonesome Gods. But it is unique, with a grounding in science fiction and Latin-American mythology as well: its hero, a present-day illusion-debunker, must jump through a kiva time window—out of L’Amour’s beloved Four Corners area and into “the Other Side,” populated not only by good Indians whom the Navajos called the Anasazi but also by evil ones with Mayan connections. The good Indians have survived the mysterious disappearance of the Mesa Verde cliffdwellers, or are L’Amour’s beautiful heroine Kawasi and her ilk timewarpers from the thirteenth century? Hero Mike Raglan’s mission is to storm the City of the Forbidden and rescue his friend Erik Hokart, kidnapped from his mesa digs by Kawasi’s foes because they want his electronics expertise to update their...

"Third World" as Place and Paradigm in Cathy Song's Picture Bride

Cathy Song's Bride won the Yale Series of Younger Poets award in 1982. Her second book, Frameless Windows, Squares of Light, appeared in 1988. Song is Korean and Chinese-American. Born in Honolulu in 1955, she attended the University of Hawaii and Wellesley College, where she received a B.A. in 1977. In 1981, she received an M.A. in creative writing from Boston University. In the summer of 1987, she returned to live in Hawaii with her husband, son, and daughter. Bride furnishes a rich text for the study of relationships among ethnicity, culture, and writing. Through an analysis of the book's organization and image patterns, followed by close readings of several key poems, I attempt to show how Bride describes both a personal history and a paradigm for analysing multicultural writing. In its portrayal of specific places and histories that is at the same time a portrayal of cultural synthesis and pluralism, Bride defines a kind of third world writing. Through the title poem Picture Bride, Song begins her book with an attempt to learn more about her paternal Korean grandmother.1 Of the scant information she already has her grandmother's age when she left Korea for Hawaii, the port she sailed from, the name of the sugar plantation where her husband worked, and his age only the first item is presented as fact in the poem's single declarative sentence. The remaining lines being questions, the poem is thus mostly speculation. Yet the process of searching is inevitably a process of constructing, for even the few details Song uses to pose questions create complex impressions of her grandmother's new surroundings and of the woman herself:

Breaking Silence: An Anthology of Contemporary Asian American Poets ed. by Joseph Bruchac

322 Western American Literature Breaking Silence: An Anthology of Contemporary Asian American Poets. Edited by Joseph Bruchac. (Greenfield Center, NY: The Greenfield Review Press, 1983. 300 pages, $9.95.) Ours has always been a multi-cultural society. But only in recent years has this begun to be reflected in the published literature. The first novel by a Mexican American, Antonio Villareal’s Pocho, was brought out by Double­ day in 1959. The first published book of poems by a Japanese American was Lawson Inada’s Before the War, from Morrow in 1971. Now we have Breaking Silence, an extraordinary book and a publishing milestone, since it is the first poetry collection to represent the full range of contemporary Asian American voices. And that range is impressively broad — from the touching memoir of a family burying funeral urns before a 1953 exodus from South Korea, to the challenging stance of a Bay Area feminist coalition called “Unbound Feet Three,” to the love poems of Shawn Wong, whose forefathers arrived from China five generations ago and whose short elegant lyrics make no reference at all to ethnic origins or to Asia. A number of these writers, like Wong and Inada, already have books and awards behind them. Hawaii-born Cathy Song won the 1982 Yale Series of Younger Poets Award for her first book, Picture Bride. Mei-Mei Bersenbrugge (“born in Peking in 1947 and grew up in Massachusetts” ) has twice received American Book Awards from Berkeley’s Before Columbus Foundation. For others this collection is the first appearance outside small magazines. Jeff Tagami is a young Filipino American (“I grew up in isolated farmhouses along the Pajaro River and Freedom, California” ). In spare, tough, com­ passionate portraits he illuminates the lives lived in that dusty world of row crops and cutting sheds. Joseph Bruchac (who also edits a highly respected literary quarterly, The Greenfield Review) solicited work from over two hundred writers and received submissions from a great many more, before selecting the fifty repre­ sented here. “My choices were subjective,” he says in his introduction. “I picked poems I liked the best, with an eye for variety and giving each poet enough space.” The writers come from Honolulu, from Toronto, from Colorado, New York City, Oakland, L.A. They often hark back to cities and landscapes rela­ tives left behind to head east across the Pacific. The book is sprinkled with place names: Shikoku, Chung-Ju, Yangtze, Manilatown, Hiroshima. Many poems are laced with foods and idioms from Asian languages, bringing both fresh blood and new vocabularies into the broad stream of American litera­ ture. The collection’s title is also the title of a poem by San Francisco writer and editor Janice Mirikitani, and that poem is worth dwelling on. Its subject — the World \\T ar ii internment — recurs often enough in these pages to remind us that it is still one of the metaphors central to Asian American experience. The poem is not about the internment per se, but about the long silence Reviews 323 that followed. It is dedicated to Mirikitani’s mother, who as a young woman was sent to Rohwer, one of two large holding camps in Arkansas. Like so many who underwent the shame and dislocation of those years, she had never expressed her deepest feelings about them. In an astonishing, two-voiced poem the daughter pays tribute to the mother who, after thirty-five years, finally speaks out. In 1981, in response to growing demands for some kind of reparation, a federal commission began hearings to investigate whether the government was liable for any injustice done to the 100,000 Japanese Americans interned during the 40s. This woman, who had been raised to bend to authority and not make waves, was among those who appeared. In the poem it becomes the occasion for her not only to testify, but to bear witness at last, to speak her heart. She talks about how family property was vandalized and lost. She wonders why no German or Italian Americans were interned. She remembers a niece who died at California’s Tule Lake camp. When a commissioner says she has gone over the five-minute time limit...