5 comments about A Boy Called H: A Childhood in Wartime Japan (Kan Yamaguchi Series).

1. I enjoyed this book so much that after reading a public library copy I ordered a copy for my personal library. (Although the book is self-described as autobiographical fiction, the library had it housed in the biography section.) The 50 chapters are very short, perfect for pre-bedtime reading, and the writing is simply enough that I would imagine that many young teens could enjoy it as well. H is not always a likeable character - he can be obnoxious and quite selfish at times. But he is also bright, perceptive, and frequently winds up doing the right thing in spite of himself.

   Written from the viewpoint of a young boy growing up in wartime Japan, criticism that the book doesn't address the atrocities committed by the Japanese military throughout Asia doesn't make much sense as the Japanese government hid these events (as well as its military defeats and appalling casualty rates) from its people even more than it tried to hide them from the world. The book is obviously critical of the leadership that persisted in pursuing a war that could have resulted in the virtual annihilation of the Japanese people and amazingly forgiving of an enemy that intentionally killed, at a minimum, hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians through strafings, fire-bombings and, of course, the nuclear destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

   "A Boy Called H" is an entertaining companion piece to Kiyoshi Kiyosawa's "A Diary of Darkness" and Haruko Taya Cook and Theodore F. Cook's "Japan At War: An Oral History." (I would also recommend Yukio Mishima's classic "Confessions of a Mask" - a superb novel about a schoolage boy in wartime Japan.) Books like these help us to remember to put a human face on our enemies, past and present. When we bomb civilian centers we are not killing a faceless entity called "the enemy" - we are killing men, women and children, most of whom are just going about their daily lives trying to survive.




2. you should still read this book. John Bester did a fantastic job of preserving the nuances of the original story and translating the Japanese into easily-readable English.

   The story is of H, the son of a tailor of Western-style suits and his bible-thumping, God-loving wife. Right away you know, that this isn't the story of an ordinary 1940's Japanese family. The author weaves some marvelous threads in creating this story so that we see the many sides of H. We find a character who is aloof but entirely likeable. The reader can immediately relate to his individuality. This story is not meant to be an historical account of the atrocities of war. It is merely an exploration into the life of a young boy during an extremely difficult time. Enjoy it for what it is. The author speaks very kindly of the Americans and the anecdotes are hilarious.

   The quality of the storytelling is so good, that you forget that this is the debut novel of a 65 year old man who paints screens plays. The book reads as if a ten-year old H is standing there reading it aloud next to you. Senoh has an amazing memory to be able to recall all of the anecdotes.

   I hope other foreign residents of Japan enjoy this as much as I did.




3. I am very sorry to rain on the parade, but this book, a one time best seller in Japan, was almost immediately proven to be a forgery. A young boy comments on Japanese wartime policy and deplomatic decisions that were not known to the public at the time. The events were taken out of an almanac in chronological order and fictionalised without any consideration as to when the Japanese public learned about it or what information they had at the time to base their opinions on. In reality, a boy like H could not have existed simply because he could not have known, and consequently could not have felt, the things he did. This is a beautified account by a leftist who would like to believe - and would like the reader to believe - that he had been a pacifist from the very begining.



4. I warrant the quality of Hitoshi Noguchi,MD's Review. It is also good summary of the criticisms in Japan.



5. "A Boy Called H" may just be fiction based on author Senoh's life, but it carries a revealing look at what was going on in Japan during WWII. It is an engaging story of an adventurous, curious and intelligent young boy doing his best to survive, and it is much more enjoyable to read than a dry scholarly publication. It is best read knowingly, understanding that there are truths within the fiction - truths that I would venture many people are unaware of. Even today it is important for all of us to understand how a government can take its people into a war that they never voted for and persuade them to believe it is for a just cause.

2 comments about Anne Frank: REFLECTIONS ON HER LIFE AND LEGACY.

1. As part of my effort to learn my role as the dentist in the 1955 version of the play at the local junior college, I read some 14 or 15 books by and about Anne Frank and this one capped my study quite nicely. I recommend it as the one to read after "The Definitive Edition" (or the fascinating "Critical Edition", if you're up to that), Willy Lindwer's "The Last Seven Months", Melissa Muller's "Anne Frank: The Biography", Miep Gies' "Anne Frank Remembered", and Eva Schloss' "Eva's Story". It's scholarly, well edited and footnoted, and has a fine bibliography.



2. In this book the editors have selected thirty-one excerpts from various writings about Anne Frank and collected them together under four basic ideas: Anne's life, Anne as a writer, Anne on stage & screen and Anne in relationship to the Holocaust. Overall the selection of the writings is very good. They are of high quality and of varying points of view, particularly with reference to the last three sections of the book.
   
   For example, there is considerable difference of opinion to Anne's ability as a writer, some find her skills exceptional while others think her ability overrated despite her impact. Better known are the arguments over whether the play and movie produced from Anne's diary truly reflected the "real" Anne. Then there are the arguments, growing in recent years, as to whether Anne's diary is an "accurate" or "important" portrayal of the Jewish experience during the Holocaust. I may not agree with Lawrence L. Langer's assessment that the diary is not a "vital text" of the Holocaust but seeing his point of view allows me to think a little deeper about my own position. And therein lies the book's real strength.
   
   Ultimately, though the excerpts are brief and it's easy to plow through them rather quickly, this book can open one's eyes. Some of the material I had read before in other places but I was very glad to encounter the wide points of view that the editors were able to gather. The fact that Anne's single work still has the power to generate such scholarship 60 years later seems to point out its continuing importance in our experience.

5 comments about Identical Strangers: A Memoir of Twins Separated and Reunited.

1. What a GRIPPING book! My husband and I listened to this book on CD on a long road trip. It was a fascinating story, well told -- I almost regretted having to stop the CD at rest stops. I pushed the "on" button again the minute we got into the car. I usually have the bad habit of nodding off while my husband is driving, but I was wide awake every minute on this trip, caught up in the story of twins separated at birth.
   
   Alas, the trip was shorter than the recorded book, so we literally sat in the car in the motel parking lot for an hour in order to finish the book. We HAD to know how the twins' search for their birth-mother turned out.
   
   I highly recommend "Identical Strangers."



2. I loved this book. I love reading about twins and their similarities. This is a fun and interesting story about twins who were separated at birth.
   Great summer reading.



3. I could not stop reading this book -- devoured it in a weekend. This is not just an analysis of the twin relationship or of adoption practice. Nor is it a typical narrative. It is a riveting personal story, like a diary, honestly told by two people suddenly faced with a stunningly unique challenge to their notions of what it means to be "me." The personal nature of the storytelling is what gripped me -- at times a bit ragged, at times emotionally inconsistent, and with twists and turns no novelist would dare invent. It's very real, and I often found myself wishing i could just go have coffee with Paula and Elyse to hear their latest. They are remarkably introspective people who question rather than just accept.



4. The bare outline of the story is captivating: twin girls are separated at birth, neither knows that the other exists, nor do the adoptive parents know, and then they not only find each other, they also find out that they were separated as part of a failed psychology study, and that mental illness is behind some of the experiments that were done.
   
   But despite the intrinsic interest in such a tale, the resulting book is less well-done than one might expect, especially since both twins are writers. Each event in their journey to discover the truth about themselves is told twice, in the voice of each woman, and there is a great deal more repetition than even this somewhat awkward device would entail. Again and again they discuss with each other and with us whether they're glad they found each other or not, how it feels to see one's own mannerisms in another person, and whether or not they really want to find their birth mother. Their soul-searching doesn't seem to go very deep, it just seems repetitive.
   
   And one of the oddly annoying things about their story is that in their photos on the back cover, they don't look like identical twins. In fact, they look more like mother and daughter. It's not quite clear how they even know that they *are* identical.
   
   I read this in a couple of days, and once I got straight who was who and which voice belonged to which sister, I enjoyed the suspense of what they would learn. But this does seem like it would have made a better magazine article than book.



5. Unless you're adopted, you cannot possibly truly understand the feelings all the secrets and lies generated by the archaic adoption system have fostered in the adoptee. This book offers invaluable insight, is well written, and most compelling. Ten years older than the twins, and involved in adoption searches for NYC adoptees, the Louise Wise process is a familiar one to me; interesting that when they closed, Spence-Chapin (Spence baby here) took over their mess. Agencies may have changed their tune over the years and through changing times, but only when all parties realize that truth is the best partner in adoption will any adoptee have a chance. Elyse and Paula have done well to shine a light on a terrible system that has harmed a multitude of victims.

5 comments about My Sense of Silence: Memoirs of a Childhood with Deafness (Creative Nonfiction Series).

1. How to adequately praise an amazing memoir that is by turns comic, tragic, brave, immensely kind (never cloying) and seemingly photographically rendered? Davis presents the reader with how his young life looked, smelled, sounded - and most importantly, how it felt. It's a remarkable story of growing up in the now-lost world of the working-class Bronx (Tremont Avenue) of the 1950's, the much younger of two sons of smart, devoted, hard-working Jewish British immigrant parents, who are also "stone deaf," in his father's words. His mother lost her hearing in childhood, and so can speak and be understood by the hearing world; his father lost his as a baby. The circumstances surrounding these events are examined, too. Their shared disability both constricted and greatly enlarged his life.

   Young Davis was deeply loved by his parents, but hyper-responsible and desperate for contact and life in the outside world. Readers are given the terrific minutiae of his life as a child - the weekly dinner menu at home, the interior of his family's apartment, life at school, the kindesses of teachers and his parents' friends in the deaf community, (lower case "d," , then) the neighbors, and the sights, sounds, smells of family life, including what he describes as a nearly religious object (because of course his father couldn't hear baseball on the radio): an Emerson Console TV. A very personal iconography of Television -- he develops a superhero alterego he calls "The Zenth" -- is part of the immense charm and humor of Davis' story. (Years later, he finds the exact same Emerson Console in a junk shop in upstate New York, another great scene in this book.) In the chapter "Honeymoon with Mom," he goes to England to visit relatives. The cozy domesticity and accepting, familial love - the music in every house, English candy - that he finds there is movingly described.

   From the confines and immense security of his family's one-bedroom apartment Davis learns difficulty and differentness of being the hypervigilant hearing child - conscientious, smart, and emotionally desperate, sometimes - of Deaf parents. There are two brothers in this family, and their interesting but troubled relationship is examined with compassion and intelligence.

   Davis is a careful writer with a wonderful and loving sense of the world. Not a word has been wasted. By the way, "Zenth" becomes a Professor of English. His generosity in revealing his life to us is immeasurable. The full picture of the old neighborhood is in itself an excellent historical narrative. You can smell the food - and hear the voices. It's also very funny at times. One of the best autobiographies I've ever read.




2. I have read several books of this gen-re, growing up with deaf parents. This one has its own, unique slant. I loved it, and I'm sure you will, too. It's fascinating when a person with parents of any particular group can look back at their childhood and explain things as they saw them through the eyes of their childhood. Mr. Davis describes his young feelings with insight and clarity and makes you understand exactly where he's coming from. It's a wonderful book, made even more special by the rainbow of seldom-heard, but easy to read, descriptive vocabulary used throughout.



3. It was very enlightening to learn of a hearing individual's experience being raised by deaf parents...the author's first awareness of his parents' deafness, his alertness and response to nighttime sounds, his role as interpreter even as a small child, his excitement at attending school surrounded by those who could hear, his need as a young adult to escape his limiting home environment, etc. However, there were times during my reading when I felt the author strayed from what I perceived as the main intent of the writing, that is, to understand or empathize with the difficulties and problems of growing up in a somewhat restricted household (at least, in his mind). These were the parts of his story that were not as interesting, and I wanted to hurry through them to get to the portions where I learned something about the deaf experience. Otherwise, it was a very good book and well done. I did notice that the author at times used sentence structure reminiscent of his descriptions of "deaf speak". I wondered whether this was intentional or just a slip to his past.



4. This could become a classic. I really felt everything he wrote about. I felt badly for him - his childhood was rather bleak. However, his intelligence and good humor won the day and he has become a successful person, as a writer, in academia and his personal, family life. To me this shows that unique situations often produce unique people, and in this there is hopefulness for those of us who feel we grew up as "outsiders." Frankly, I think everyone fits into that category one way or another, so I recommend this book to...everyone.



5. Davis writes extremely well and the images of his youth are quite powerful. He also does an excellent job conveying the difficulties of relating to his parents.

   However, he can never seem to escape from a level of self pity. Though he ascribes this to his parent's deafness, often one wonders if his feelings are not rooted in his own deep classism. Much of what he describes as his youthful dificulties are not uncommon to find in the writtings of other children of working class immigrant jews. The embarassment he feels seems far more driven by this than his parents inability to hear.

   I grew a bit tired of his deep self pity, perpetually describing himself as the victim of almost every circumstance.

   In one poinient passage, he describes how his mother had once been courted by a wealthy english suitor whom she rejected. He wonders why she chose not marry this "catch." I myself wonder if davis would not have much prefered for this to be the case. It seems he would rather have been the child of the wealthy deaf than of the hearing poor.

   While it is worth the read, other worthy texts by children of the deaf are far less self involved.

2 comments about The Hooligan's Return: A Memoir.

1. This is a wonderful, if difficult book. It cronicles the author's life. Norman Manea suffered from both the Holocaust and Communism. Being Jewish, he and his family were deported during the Second World War to a concentration camp set up by Romania's fascist regime (General Ion Antonescu, Hitler's ally) in Transnistria, where several hundred thousand Jews were imprisoned and died in horrible circumstances. Luckily he survived the KZ and returned to Romania. Later on, when he had become a writer, he was declared enemy of the state and a 'hooligan' by Romania's Communists, because he had dared criticize the antisemitic government in an article. (Another fascinating Romanian-Jewish writer, Mihail Sebastian (see his Jurnal) was described as a 'hooligan' by antisemits in a literary scandal back in the 30's - the term has deep connotations for Manea). His relationship to his homeland remained troubled even after he left Romania in the 80's, settling down in New York as a professor for literature (he teaches at Bard College). Although he is one of Romania's best writers, his country's literary elite treats him with a certain embarassment. He can be compared in this respect to Imre Kertesz's relationship with Hungary.
   I liked this book not only because of all the detailed, multi-faceted and subtle description of these events, but also because it is an honest and selfironical autobiography. Manea is a reluctant autobiographer. My feeling is that he wrote this book out of duty; not to brag about his past, rather to pay tribute to those he loved and to remind the world of the terrible journey he has been through - a very typical journey for Jews and many East Europeans in the 20th century...

   P.S. If this book is superfluous, then so are the books by e.g. Anne Frank, Primo Levy and Mihail Sebastian. Good luck in burning them!




2. Francine Prose's blurb says it all: check it out on the inside cover of this book. THR is a multi-layered memoir that does not always proceed in chronological fashion. This story of a Romanian exile's return to his homeland is more substantial and real than Romanian-born writer Andrei Codrescu (who changed his surname from Perlmutter to "Codrescu," probably to appear more exotic in the US). When Norman Manea fears encountering the staff at the Intercontinental Hotel in Bucharest, he has REAL reason to, unlike the poseur "Codrescu," who likes to fancy himself a revolutionary. In 1992, Manea penned a controversial essay on M. Eliad, a conflicted man whose relations with Romania's ultranational Iron Guard caused him much intrapersonal conflict. Manea also blew the whistle then on the RO community in chicago where a significant community of IG sympathizers still carry the flame today. In fact, he intimates, there may yet be a connection between the IG/Chicago Legionnaires and the Securitate in RO even today. Dangerous stuff even in these enlightened times some 60+ years later after the changing of the fascist/communistic guard in RO. Debates of this type go on in all eastern European countries, as they begin to sort thru their messy post-fascist/post-communist pasts; combine this with the added and ironical baggage of having many former Party leaders morph into "democratic" leaders. Absurdity never dies. Manea inspires his readers to delve into the works of other RO writers like Cioran, Paul Celan, I. Culianu, Petru Cretia...so Francine Prose sums things up neatly with her observation that "THR operates on so many levels that finally, it eludes all classification." Well said.

4 comments about A Bruised Child: A Story of Emotional Child Abuse and the Courage to Heal.

1. Usually I read books that have made me cry (as well as everyone I let borrow the books after me)
   like for example, Dave Pelzer and Marcia Cameron, books like those will make you balw your eyes out when you read what horrible things they went through. However, this book quotes from the Bible a lot, so it can be spiritual. However, I thought it was going to be a book that would depress me after reading it, but it didn't. It was helpful, and the things he described that his mother and father said to him (verbal and emotional abuse as he put it) didn't seem that bad. I think that the time and era that the author grew up in is a time when people didn't know anything about the proper way to adress their families. Children just did what they were told and that was it. It didn't seem that bad. Also, this book read like a textbook in a way too because it stated what the "correct" way to talk to a child was, especially in this day and age.
   It was a good book, but not what I had expected.. Still a good read. Very spiritual and Bible- oriented.



2. When your children stop talking to you, you gotta think what you have done to them when they were young or even after they have grown up. All the physical and psychological abuse... do you realize what you have done to them? Can you dare to disagree with your parents? I think NOT. NOTHING... NOTHING... NOTHING can heal all the wounds and bruises... THERE IS ONLY HATE!
   
   THE SWEETEST REVENGE TO THESE KINDA PARENTS - avoid them...
   
   All parents should read this book.



3. When your children stop talking to you, you gotta think what you have done to them when they were young or even after they have grown up. All the physical and psychological abuse... do you realize what you have done to them? Can you dare to disagree with your parents? I think NOT. NOTHING... NOTHING... NOTHING can heal all the wounds and bruises... THERE IS ONLY HATE!



4. words can't describe how much i despise this book. I actually threw it against the wall before it made its way to the garbage can. I read 3 pages. If you want to hear inane commentary of every single cognitive process this guy had over the course of his childhood then go for it. I doubt the author has recovered at all from his abuse and seems to desperately try to turn his tragedy (whatever it was) into something interesting. Very self indulgent. I felt as if he was dictating a psychotherapists cold analysis of himself to the reader. If you are looking for insight into the patterns and recovery of abuse, look elsewhere. Read Judith Herman's "Trauma and Recovery".

3 comments about Cowboy Princess: Life with My Parents Roy Rogers and Dale Evans.

1. Cowboy Princess: Life With My Parents Roy Rogers And Dale Evans is Cheryl Rogers-Barnett's true story of growing up as the daughter of "the King of Cowboys" and "the Queen of the West", whose popular exploits on movies and TV captivated the nation. Joy, the gruelling demands of the entertainment industry, the terrible loss of three siblings, and the lively personalities of those who shared their lives with Roy Rogers, Dale Evans, and Cheryl Rogers-Barnett fill this highly readable and personal account. Highly recommended for fans of Roy Rogers and the western movies of yesteryear.



2. I loved this book! I became a little girl again with eyes wide open in awe of my heroes - Roy and Dale. Cheryl is very honest about the fun, the hectic schedules, the grief over the loss of her siblings, her rebellious nature in an innocent way, the strengths and weaknesses of her well-known parents who raised their family well, loved them dearly, lived a honorable life and had a lot of adventures in the way. Where the fans viewed Roy and Dale as super heroes ... Cheryl presents them as parents. I highly recommend this book!



3. who enriched our lives over five decades.
   
   Cheryl Rogers Barnett has truly written a memoir full of Love, Respect, and Admiration for her late parents, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans. She writes of the people they were, before she was born, the circumstances of her adoption - yes, Cheryl was adopted by Roy and his first wife - and growing up in the Rogers-Evans* (Roy's first wife died while Cheryl was still a young pre-adolescent child, Dale lovingly took her on as her own) household. Roy, bless his soul, was in many ways, a real cowboy who eschewed the Hollywood lifestyle and could live in the great outdoors - in fact one of their early homes out at Lake Hughes was in a wooded setting - with rattlesnakes! Knowing that this wouldn't work, Roy moved in closer to Los Angeles, but always made sure that his children were grounded and did not have airs about them.
   
   Barnett writes about her growing-up in the Rogers-Evans household, and in reading it one kind of wishes that too were put of a family that truly lived by the Cowboy Code. Roy and Dale were among the kindest folks one could ever meet, and I sure wish I did. Both Roy and Dale were unfailing kind and considerate to most people they met. It speaks volumes that in the one instance Roy ever got angry at fans was when they chose to want to visit him on the day they were burying Cheryl's little sister, Robin, and only AFTER these uncouth and rude people insisted in visiting him, having no consideration for the grief of the family.
   
   She writes of the wonder horse Trigger, of how George "Gabby" Hayes was as different in real life as he was in the movies. Gabby, bless him, was a trained Shakespearian actor who was more accustomed to wearing tweed suits than a bandana and chaps - still, he too made the roles his very own. There are the Hollywood stories and vignettes of growing up knowing John Wayne and so many other Western heroes and other television and movie celebs, written straightforward, (the reader will never have the feeling that this book is a gossipy read) of Nudie the Famous Rodeo Tailor whom Roy helped to get established in Hollywood, and finally of the last decades when Roy and Dale, seeing how different Hollywood had become (mid-1960s), chose to move out to Apple Valley, and live out their lives there.
   
   Throughout it all, Roy and Dale always gave deep love to the people they knew, and encouraged their children to be the best and fine folks in their own right(after learning she was adopted, Cheryl underwent a quest to learn about her real parents, with Roy and Dale supporting her every way). With the happiness there were the tragedies, first Robin, then the young son who died serving in the U.S. Army, and the adopted daughter from Korea, killed in a senseless road accident. Throughout it all, Roy and Dale's faith in God was never unwavering and was always solid. They lived the true meaning of the Cowboy and Cowgirl Codes.*
   
   *(on their very last record together, Roy, Dale and son Dusty recorded a song written by two great friends of mine, Chris Hillman and Steve Hill entitled: "God's Plan" ...that pretty well sums up the honest and rich meaning of the lives they lived.
   
   A warm memoir of a time when the tinsel Cowboys were so very much real - and real people too, unlike the sad imitation that Hollywood has become these days. Thank you, Cheryl Rogers-Barnett for a heartwarming read, and for signing my Roy Rogers-Dale Evans lunchpail in Wickenburg, Arizona last April.

No comments about Fetched-Up Yankee: A New England Boyhood Remembered.

2 comments about From a High Place: A Life of Arshile Gorky.

1. Matthew Spender, son of poet Stephen, is a good writer who does a deft job of weaving his research into a lively story. But being the husband of Gorky's oldest daughter limits his interests to the "family" side of the artist's life: to hear Spender tell it, Gorky lived through three decades of New York's modern art revolution dreaming of butterchurns back in Armenia. He never really explains what drove Gorky to become an artist, let alone an abstract modern artist, in the face of family pressures, the trials of being an immigrant, and the burden he carried as a survivor of the Armenian genocide.
   
   Gorky's idyllic memories of childhood clearly played a major role in his life and art, but so did Picasso and Cezanne, whose style he copied until the breakthrough near the end of his life. Spender plays down the endless hours Gorky spent in front of the canvas trying to insert himself into the history of Western art, preferring to read the artist's somewhat restricted interests (he steered clear of the tumultuous politics of Thirties New York, avoided bohemia, and refused to theorize about the inner sources of his art) as a gauge of how deeply Armenia held him. Maybe. But more attention to the exciting world his work unfolded in would have helped to explain Gorky's achievement a little more clearly. Hayden Herrera's more recent "Arshile Gorky: His Life and Work" may have replaced this biography and is probably the better place to turn for learning more about his life.



2. Matthew Spender has something to offer for someone really curious about this artists work. I have been compairing the three biographies. Herrara's book has been much acclained. But, when it comes to getting into the nitty -gritty of an artist's work, Spender is better. Particularly when he writes of his work in the fields of Virginia.None of the other writers have really tackled this important part of Gorky's art. As a sculpture Spender must have wondered would Gorky like me and my work.The Armenian backgound has been covered by quite a few books. None can surpass some of Spenders insight into Gorky's creative process.A shortcomihg of this biography is the lack of color reproductions of the paintings.His choice of photos of the family of Gorky ,give us a glimpse of his background. The paper back (a catalogue ) "the breakthrough years /Arshile Gorky" would be a good companion book of this bio as it has ample repros and an essay by Spender among others ;Aupling for one.

1 comments about They Took My Father: Finnish Americans in Stalin's Russia.

1. This is THE book for those of Finnish heritage that are interested in a nearly forgotten time in our history. Mayme gives us a gripping tale about her time in Soviet Russia after being moved there by her communist agitator father Oscar Corgan. Oscar was one of the primary proponents of American Finns moving to Russia to begin a new life there. This time is called "Karelian Fever". Mayme's description of her life and times in Russia is harrowing. Even though her father was taken and killed by soviet authorities she remains unapologetic. This is a fine companion piece to "No Home for us Here" and "Karelia".