matic post. The book is dedicated to the Sugihara
family and to “all others who place the welfare of
others before themselves.”
Most recently, Mochizuki has written a novel
called Beacon Hill Boys (2002). Set in the early
1970s, it tells of the adventures of Dan Inagaki
and his high school friends. Dan’s problem is
that his parents expect him to be the “model mi-
nority” and to live up to the image of his perfect
older brother. However, Dan is upset that his high
school only teaches about the mainstream culture
and history, and nothing about the internment
camps. Becoming an activist alongside other mul-
ticultural students, he demands a class that will
discuss the camps, Cesar Chavez, and Wounded
Knee. In this novel rich with the slang, pop culture,
and music of the ’70s, Dan and three Japanese-
American friends achieve their own rebellious
brand of identity, redefining what it means to be
both Asian and cool.
Often dramatizing the conflict between cul-
tures experienced by second- and third-generation
immigrants, Mochizuki’s works as a whole seek to
celebrate heroism, to combat stereotyping, and to
eradicate prejudice.
Sandra S. HughesMohanraj, Mary Anne (1971– )
Born in Sri Lanka, Mohanraj moved to the United
States when she was two years old. She has a
bachelor’s degree in English from the University
of Chicago, an M.F.A. from Mills College, and a
doctorate in creative writing from the University
of Utah. A professor of South-Asian literature,
creative writing and online magazine publishing
at Roosevelt University, she has written an Inter-
net erotica book, Torn Shapes of Desire (1997), and
was the chief editor of two online magazines: the
erotica magazine Clean Sheets, and the science
fiction magazine Strange Horizons. In addition
to founding and moderating the Internet Erotica
Writers’ Workshop, Mohanraj has edited two print
erotica anthologies, Aqua Erotica (2000), and
We t (2002), and published two create-your-own
erotic fantasy books, Kathryn in the City (2003)
and The Classic Professor (2003). For her mother
as a Christmas gift, she wrote a Sri Lankan cook-
book A Taste of Serendip (2004). She also wrote
Silence and the Word (2004) and the mainstream
novel-in-stories Bodies in Motion (2005). Mo-
hanraj advocates healthy sexuality and portrays
strong, consenting women as sexy and desirable
and writes erotica with plausible story lines and
well-defined characters.
Bodies in Motion is about multiple generations
of two immigrant Sri Lankan families whose old-
est members travel from Sri Lanka to Britain and
then the United States to prove their exceptional
brilliance to their colonizers by pursuing higher
education in the first world. These characters and
their progeny appear and reappear in the stories
as Mohanraj nonchalantly mentions their public
and professional achievements, while also delving
into the intimate details of their private lives. The
stories are not so much about what the charac-
ters do and achieve, but rather what they think,
feel and imagine. In the first story, “Oceans Bright
and Wide,” the well-meaning Sister Catherine at-
tempts to persuade Thani to send his bright and
intelligent daughter, Shanthi, to study at Oxford.
Sister Catherine, however, inadvertently reveals
her colonial arrogance by asking Thani, “Don’t
you want the world to know? Don’t you want us
to know... the exceptional heights you people
are capable of?” (8). Ironically, Shanthi ends up a
frustrated mother of four children, teaching high
school, her doctorate degree of little consequence
to her, to the post-colonists, or to the first world.
This power struggle between the colonizers’ and
the natives’ culture and values, both in the past
and in the present, is at the center of most of the
stories. In these stories set both in the United
States and Sri Lanka, Buddhists and Catholics,
Tamils and Sinhalese, parents and children, men
and women all battle to live according to their
own particular beliefs. They remain in perpetual
motion, however, since all their choices, whether
they are to live by ancient Sri Lankan traditions
or modern American ones, are fraught with prob-
lems. In all the stories, Mohanraj remains true to
her quest of understanding the private lives and
sexuality of people amid the political realities ofMohanraj, Mary Anne 197