writing haikus and traveling across the country to
read at colleges and universities. Because he dedi-
cated his life to being a poet, teacher, scholar, and
community leader, he is viewed as an elder states-
man of American poetry, a role he is more than
happy to play.
Bibliography
Chang, Juliana. “Time, Jazz, and the Racial Sub-
ject: Lawson Inada’s Jazz Poetics.” In Racing and
(E)Racing Language: Living with the Color of Our
Words, edited by Ellen J. Goldner and Safiya Hen-
derson-Holmes, 134–154. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse
University Press, 2001.
Holliday, Shawn. Lawson Fusao Inada. Western Writ-
ers Series #160. Boise, Idaho: Boise State Univer-
sity Press, 2003.
Sato, Gayle. “Lawson Inada’s Poetics of Relocation:
Weathering, Nesting, Leaving the Bough.” Amera-
sia Journal 26, no. 3 (2000–2001): 139–160.
Shawn Holliday
Inheritance Indira Ganesan (1998)
Set in the mock paradise island of Pi near India—
full of mango trees, monkeys, flowers, and endur-
ing warmth—INDIRA GANESAN’s Inheritance is a
novel that defines relationships, culture, feminism,
adolescence, and the discovery of self. Through its
colorful characters and their personal revelations,
it offers insight into family, the borders of love
and hate, the angst of loss, and the healing power
of acceptance.
The story revolves around 15-year-old Sonil,
who, after having been raised by her aunts in main-
land India, comes to the island to visit her favorite
grandmother prior to attending university, and to
recover from her shaky health. Her grandmother
is a constant in Sonil’s life and perhaps the only
stabilizing force she has. As Sonil begins to recover
her health, its effect spreads. Although she still
avoids her mother—an eccentric, beautiful, and
remarkable woman who withdrew from her when
she was six—she now sneaks into her mother’s
room and borrows her poetry book in an attempt
to understand her.
The enigma of her white American father, who
left India before Sonil was born, and her mother’s
rejection and abandonment of her at a young age
cause Sonil to search for acceptance, something she
finds in Richard, an American twice her age look-
ing for spiritual awakening in India. Their sexual
relationship leads them to their own conclusions
about life. Richard, on his own search for truth,
eventually rejects Sonil. He has his own demons
to exorcise and much like Sonil, but for different
reasons, has his own set of problems in dealing
with his mother, a woman who is apparently on
her own quest for spirituality. Sonil, on the other
hand, learns the true meaning of forgiveness and
begins to look within for answers she has always
searched for from the outside.
Her experiences and interactions with oth-
ers throughout the story help move her from the
comfortable life of her grandmother’s compound
into the expanse of the greater world. When her
cousin Jani, afraid of arranged marriage and the
pain of childbirth, enters a convent, Sonil also flees
to the convent to escape the grief of being rejected
by Richard. During her visit to the temple of Sita, a
reincarnation of the goddess Lakshmi, after whom
Sonil’s mother is named, Sonil finds the path she
should take. In the end, she realizes that life is a
constant process and that each event only brings a
new series of questions, some of which will never
be answered.
Anne Marie FowlerInnocent, The Richard E. Kim (1968)
Revisiting characters first introduced in The MAR-
TYRED (1964), RICHARD KIM’s second novel—The
Innocent—offers a thoroughly convoluted and un-
sentimental portrayal of the difficulties and cor-
ruption facing the nascent South Korean state in
the aftermath of the Korean War. Major Lee—for-
merly Captain Lee in The Martyred—provides
a first-person account of the intricate plans of
the Command Group (a consort of eight officers
in the Republic of South Korea Army) to stage a
coup d’état in order to purge the government of
corrupt officials and megalomaniacal generalsInnocent, The 125