Banana Yoshimoto – Rita E. Gould: An Artful Sequence of Words

On Reading Women in Translation

And the reason I purchased this book had less to with it being a well-regarded translated novel and more to do with it being a book everyone seemed to love…that just happened to be translated from another language.

On Reading Women in Translation. Text by Rita E. Gould I think the first translated book I consciously chose to buy, a book I knew beforehand was translated, was Laura Esquivel’s Like Water for Chocolate (translated by Thomas Christensen and Carol Christensen). It was by no means the first text (either prose or poetry) I’d read in translation, of course. As a young child, I read Pippi Longstocking, likely unaware that Astrid Lindgren wrote it in Swedish.¹ As a tween (or thereabouts), I understood the classic tales I read in Edith Hamilton’s Mythology were written in Greek or Latin originally, though I didn’t appreciate what translation entailed. Through my studies, my awareness of translated works grew and I gained insight into how translation might affect a text’s meaning and the reliability of interpreting it.² And of course, that also meant I bought many translated works as a student. What differentiated Esquivel’s novel from these other works, however, was that it was (then) a contemporary novel I selected for leisure reading. It had not been assigned reading, as both Wislawa Symborzka’s poems and a heavily abridged version of Les Misérables initially had been. It was not yet a “classic” work that significantly influenced/shaped literature or even a book that a sibling discarded.³ And the reason I purchased this book had less to with it being a well-regarded translated novel and more to do with it being a book everyone seemed to love…that just happened to be translated from another language. It’s this latter distinction that strikes me as important.

I’ve made a point to include translated novels in my reading recently, because (as I observed last year) I realized that I typically overlooked such books in the past. Expanding my reading horizons remains important to me, but I’d be mistaken in not acknowledging that most translated novels generally tend to be well written. For publishers to undertake the risk associated with printing a translated novel, that novel must achieve a certain level of acclaim or popularity for people to champion its translation. My experience of attending a twitter chat focused on reading women in translation was enlightening: so many people passionately recommended novels they’d read, attesting to how great, insightful, or thought provoking these books were.⁴ And I think it’s this promise of remarkable writing that compelled me to read more women’s writing in translation. Two (very different) favorites emerged from those recommendations: The Vegetarian by Han Kang (translated by Deborah Smith) and Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto (translated by Megan Backus). While I can’t claim to deeply love every translated work I’ve read since (personal tastes vary, after all), I generally found reading them all rewarding.

But there is one remaining thought that haunts me when I consider reading women in translation, works that one day may be hailed as classics. As I’ve selected books to read or discuss during Women in Translation Month, I found myself thinking about what my intellectual life would be without the many translated works I’ve read. Losing The Odyssey alone would leave a huge literary crater: Neither The Aeneid nor The Penelopiad would exist without it. Translated works shape how we think and how we in turn write just as much as works written in our native language(s) do. I cannot help but wonder what deeper insights we might be missing when we bypass these works. And given how infrequently women’s writing is translated, I suspect that difference here could be significant. It’s among the reasons I intend to continue reading women in translation year-round as well as rate, recommend, and (when I can) review translated works written by women so that I can help publishers and fellow readers see what they’re missing. And the more often we all do so, the more available these excellent works will become to everyone.

NOTES:

At that rather young age, I treated title pages, the locations where both authors and translators get mentioned, as filler to be skipped past quickly. ↩
Pun intended. ↩
One of the advantages of older siblings is that their discarded books become your books years before anyone would think to hand you a copy. Mythology was over my head in some places, but I love and appreciate it more and more every time I read it. ↩
In this case, the 2016 Women Writers Network twitter chat for #witmonth. ↩

The Reading Review: Books Past and Future

The last week of 2017 finally arrived with a wintry blast that felt particularly chilling given the previously balmy (if unseasonable) temperatures earlier in the month. While the year’s end always seems to be an appropriate moment to pause from the everyday hustle and contemplate where we’ve been and where we hope to go, it seems perhaps more necessary than ever this year. For my part, I look forward to discovering opportunities to do better and be better in the upcoming year. I also plan to continue reading books that challenge my thinking, comfort me on darker days, and outright amuse me.

Over this past year, I’ve read around 50 books, not counting the ones I’ve re-read both for a certain youngster’s bedtime or my own pleasure. I picked my top notable reads because they contained fascinating stories, some imagined and some true, that resonated with me long after I read them. Most (though not all) became blog posts (links to posts are provided). And although 2017 has been a troubling year (with December being a rather difficult month both generally and personally), it still has had its bright moments. Among them includes the remarkable bounty of books I received as gifts. In fact, the most books I’ve received as presents in a year…ever.[*] So many that I made myself promise to start my 2018 reading list with in-house books only,[†] excepting science-related nonfiction.[‡] Well, we’ll see how long that resolution lasts. I hope your new year is a good one filled with great books. Happy reading!

2017 Notable Reads (Links to Posts Are Provide Where Applicable)

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

Human Acts by Han Kang (Translated by Deborah Smith)

Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto (Translated by Megan Backus)

Two Old Women by Velma Wallis

Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong and the New Research That’s Rewriting the Story by Angela Saini

The Snow Child by Eowen Ivey

The Good Thief by Hannah Tinti

The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing by Marie Kondō

Swing Time by Zadie Smith

2018’s Already Ambitious Reading List

Beloved by Toni Morrison

The Piano Teacher by Elfriede Jelinek (Translated by Joachim Neugroschel)

The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler

Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel (Translated by Thomas Christensen and Carol Christensen)[§]

You Won’t Remember This: Travel with Babies (Edited by Sandy Bennett-Haber)

Dreams Before the Start of Time by Anne Charnock

My Drunk Kitchen: A Guide to Eating, Drinking, and Going with Your Gut by Hannah Hart

Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

Bossypants by Tina Fey

The Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector (Translated by Bejamin Moser)

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath^§

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott^§

Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman

Confession of the Lioness by Mia Couto (Translated by David Brookshaw)

NOTES:

[*] I had to restrain myself from yelling, “I have all the books!”

[†] That and my late fees at the library are getting ridiculous.

[‡] I didn’t get any of those, and I’m currently reading one…which is due to the library very soon!

[§] These books represents ones I intend to re-read.

Loneliness and Grief in Yoshimoto’s Kitchen

“I got dressed to begin another day. Over and over, we begin again.”

The heart of the home truly is the kitchen for the young protagonist of Banana Yoshimoto’s debut novel Kitchen (translated by Megan Backus). University student Mikage Sakurai loves kitchens, which become her refuge when the death of her grandmother making her an orphan twice over.[*] Stunned by her utter solitude (“It’s total science fiction. The blackness of the cosmos.”), she only can sleep next to the humming refrigerator. Other obligations also press on her. While her grandmother left her money,[†] she nonetheless must downsize her apartment to stretch her funds. Still grief-stricken, the thought of moving and house hunting paralyzes her. Fortunately, Mikage also inherits her grandmother’s friendship with Yuichi Tanabe. Yuichi, a younger university student, works part-time at the floral shop her grandmother frequented. He and his mother, Eriko, offer a much needed respite by opening their home to Mikage, complete with a beautiful kitchen (“It was a good kitchen. I fell in love with it at first sight”).

Grief, Connection, and Magic

Yoshimoto’s novel (as well as its novella companion “Moonlight Shadow”)[‡] contemplates grief and loneliness with a delicate touch. While these emotions predominate, they are offset by moments of joy and connection. Yoshimoto uses light and dark imagery symbolically to reinforce these feelings: in the novel’s second half, “the telephone was glowing” in Yuichi’s mind whereas Mikage felt the line to Yuichi was submerged in deep, dark water, respectively suggesting his need for her companionship and her recognition of his grief. Part of the novel’s charm in negotiating such difficult topics involves its subtle use of magical realism that confers an almost fairy-tale quality to the story. Yuichi appears at just the right moment to offer Mikage a place to live while she sorts out her affairs. Both young people share a remarkable dream that takes place in the grandmother’s now empty kitchen, in which Yuichi implores Mikage to stay at his family’s apartment. Mikage even intuits which hotel room belongs to Yuichi before scaling the wall to deliver him katsudon. (This latter example also represents a brilliant gender role reversal, as Mikage plays—albeit comically—the traditionally male role of rescuer for a distressed Yuichi.)

You had me at katsudon. (Yōfū Katsudon [Western-style pork cutlet on rice] at Nagaoka, Niigata Prefecture, Japan. Siriusplot at Japanese Wikipedia. CC-BY-SA-3.0-migrated.)

Transformations

However magical her delivery may be, Yoshimoto does not shield her characters from pain. Eriko explains hers (and the novel’s) philosophy to Mikage: we must experience “true despair” to understand joy. Mikage also comes to accept that, even when we are with others, we are always alone. While she despairs that we’re “always defeated”, this knowledge lets her live more fully. Grief, therefore, is transformative in Kitchen. Having discovered a passion for cooking while living with the Tanabes, Mikage leaves university and successfully embarks on a cooking career despite her limited qualifications. Eriko’s own experience of grief literally changes her. Watching his wife slowly succumb to cancer forced Eriko to understand that “the world didn’t exist for [his] benefit”.[§] Becoming aware that he disliked being a man and realizing he would never love again, Eriko transitioned to a woman and opened a gay nightclub,[**] thereby straddling roles of provider and nurturer. Her story essentially serves as a loose guide for Mikage who also bridges these roles: cooking is her profession but it is one that nurtures.

The kitchen, of course, serves as an extended metaphor throughout this novel, representing that which sustains people through terrible loss, both in terms of sustenance (food, nourishment) and refuge. Kitchen creates this space as a haven for healing and connection, perhaps even new beginnings. And it’s this uplifting spirit that makes Kitchen a story that satisfies indeed.

NOTES:

[*] Mikage’s grandparents raised her after her parents died. Her grandfather subsequently died while she was in junior high school. Hence, she’s doubly orphaned by losing two sets of guardians.

[†] Discovering an orphaned character who isn’t destitute is a pleasure.

[‡] “Moonlight Shadow” (also translated by Megan Backus) typically accompanies Kitchen. My focus here is on the larger work.

[§] My pronoun usage mirrors that of the novel, using female for post-transition and male pronouns for pre-transition Eriko (formerly called Yugi).

[**] It’s worth observing that most characters seem to respect Eriko’s gender identity, even though it’s mentioned on occasion that Eriko is “really a man”. Given that Eriko’s fate is common for transgender women, a content warning is appropriate.