Nisei Daughter

The disappointing thing about this book is how obviously self-censored the book is. Sone very briefly reveals deeply felt rage and resentment at intervals during the book, only to shake them off and quickly change to a more light-hearted topic. Granted, there is an ironic tone to many of her comments and situations, and again granted, she is writing for a post-war audience that probably would not be receptive to outspoken criticism of the Internment, but still Sone seems to sugar coat the experience just a bit too much for my tastes. By the end, with the patriotic speeches that make it sound like the Internment was as much the fault of the Japanese Americans as it was the government, I was getting a little tired of Sone's carefree and apologetic tone, especially after the highly charged preface. In the book, Sone all but thanks the government for interning her and her family and giving them this character-building experience.

If you are truly interested in the internment and the impact it had on the Japanese Americans, try a book like Joy Kogawa's "Obasan." It's written about the Japanese Canadian experience, which was even more extreme than the Japanese American one. Kogawa also experienced internment first hand, but "Obasan" is written far enough after the fact that Kogawa is able to give the story more perspective and is able to put a more honest face on what really happened.

Nisei Daughter is not a bad book by any means ... but it did not live up to my expectations either. Sone's self-conscious editing makes the story seem much more like a novel than the autobiography that it supposedly is. I kept wishing she would drop the mask she was wearing and let the reader see what she was really thinking!

I think the best parts of this memoir deal with the description of Japanese culture and the conflict between the Americanism of the Nisei and their Issei parents most of whom heavily maintained Japanese customs. Perhaps the funniest part of the latter in the book takes place during the wedding reception held for her brother Henry and his bride in their camp in Idaho during the war.

I'd have to say that the best written, the most vivid part of the books is the family trip to visit relatives in Japan where her little brother Kenji fatally contracted dysentery. I'm guessing that this trip must have taken place around 1929.

The author gets released from camp mid-way through the war to go live with some former missionaries in Chicago who are very nice. She works for a dentist who is, however, a real pain in the butt and she eventually quits.

She then gets the opportunity to go attend Wendell college in Indiana where she lives with a nice old widow and she says that this college was full of alot of diverse foreign students. She made many close friends. During her post-camp period, her faith in American democracy was largely restored because she met so many nice white Americans who weren't racist louts. The book ends on a sort of patriotic note which I can't follow completely. In Chicago she was often mistaken for Chinese and people told her how much they respected the Chinese people, America's ally and she was sometimes mistaken for various Chinese celebrities.

It's obvious, that the author, who at the time of this 1979 edition, was still a clinical psychologist, knows how to write. She is a very gifted descriptive writer, though sometimes she lays it on too heavy. She tells her life story with a great deal of sentimentality; at times I think she pours it on a little too sweetly. But heck it's her story and she crafts it very well.