I think that this book is very interesting so far. I really like how Oseki writes in a very different style than what we are used to. It is kind of confusing at some times, but I feel that she isn’t holding anything back about the characters. We get to know everything upfront for once! How amazing! No more guessing or trying to figure out what characters are going to do.
First off, I think that its quite different how they are creating this television show based around meat. Why meat? That is so strange to me. One thing that i don’t understand is why they hid that some of the individuals that are working “behind stage” are japanese. They pretty much lied to America to get people to think that there was no influence from the japanese culture. In the beginning, there was a list of Desirable things for My American Wife. Almost every thing contained in that list had to deal with attractiveness. That made me rethink what Americans are really viewed as. Everrything has to be based around physical appearance, attractive liftestyles, attractive friends…It just really caught my attention. Comparing that to what we know of Japanese culture, we see that japanese culture is not all about “attractiveness, but instead about family values.
It really caught my eye when they were talking about how meaning a name has. This reminded me of Native Speaker so much! Ozeki really couldn’t have said it better because a name is really what the world knows you as. “Name is Face to all the world.” (9). Following that paragraph on page 9, it talked about Jane feeling “freakish” because in Japan when you were six feet tall you were seen as a freak. How much alike is this to Nisei Daughter?!
I could probably blab for a while about this book because i feel that it contains so much! I am so happy that this novel is an easy read and very straight forward so far, but i do feel that its going to get more complicated as we begin to read on…maybe?
