reappearing in different stories at different stages
of their lives. The stories also interpret and make
relevant older cultural beliefs. In the first story,
“Anchorage,” the curative power of the Prayer Lady
is mentioned as a dubious medical option; but in
the last story, “The Prayer Lady,” her power is re-
vealed to be more than just dubious superstition,
for she is able to challenge and cajole sick people
into abandoning depressive thoughts and return
to good health.
The stories are all women-centered with the
men occupying peripheral positions. Power strug-
gles within the family between the young and the
old persist with the older women dominating the
younger ones. But in stories like “The Bishop’s
Wife,” the young successfully challenge this domi-
nation. In the story, Missy effectively separates her
own desires from her mother’s ambitions for her,
rejecting a prestigious scholarship in order to stay
on the island. Yet when necessary, the younger
women give the old their due as revealed by the
ninth story, “Talking to the Dead,” in which the
ghost of an old woman known as Aunty Talking to
the Dead returns to haunt her son, Clinton, who
in his impatience for progress has forgotten to give
her life a traditional closure. Only when Yuri, her
apprentice in the traditional funeral business, gives
her a proper cremation does Aunty put every-
thing back in order. “Talking to the dead” means
balancing the new ideas entering the island with
the traditional wisdom of the old. As the old once
indulged the romantic fantasies of the young, the
young indulge the old by keeping alive the mem-
ory of their traditions. Only then can there be a
balance between the old and the new and between
the living and the dead.
Sukanya B. SenapatiWatkins, Yoko Kawashima (1933– )
The child of a Japanese diplomat, Yoko Kawashima
was born in Japan but spent most of her childhood
in southern Manchuria and in the town of Nanam
in northern Korea, then under Japanese control.
She lived a comfortable middle-class life in her
home in a bamboo grove in Nanam, attending
school and learning about Japanese language and
culture through extra lessons in calligraphy, floral
arrangement, tea ceremony, and the like.
In her first autobiographical book for young
adults, So Far from the Bamboo Grove (1986), Wat-
kins tells the story of how she, her mother, and
her older sister escaped from Korean Commu-
nists who stormed Nanam at the close of World
War II in 1945, seeking retribution for Japan’s long
subjection of their country. Because Yoko’s father
was on diplomatic duty in Manchuria and her
older brother, Hideyo, was working miles away,
the mother and girls had to flee alone. Mother
Kawashima, 16-year-old Ko, and 11-year-old
Yoko make their way slowly toward Seoul—first
by sneaking aboard a hospital train and later by
foot. During the journey, Yoko is wounded in the
chest and deafened in one ear by an explosion.
The women experience hunger, many hardships,
and narrowly avoid being killed on their way to
Seoul. They eventually make their way to Japan on
a refugee ship. They travel to Kyoto, where Yoko
enrolls in the Sagano School for Girls and is relent-
lessly teased. Meanwhile, the mother journeys to
northern Japan, only to find that her parents and
in-laws have been killed in the war. The mother
dies at the train station in Kyoto upon her return,
leaving the two girls to fend for themselves. Liv-
ing in wretched poverty, they await the return of
their father and brother. A separate thread of the
story explains how Hideyo is saved and fostered by
a friendly Korean family before escaping to Japan
to be reunited with his two sisters.
Watkins continues her life story in My Brother,
My Sister, and I (1994), focusing on the first six
years of her life as a refugee. Still living in poverty,
the two teenaged girls and their older brother oc-
cupy a room in a warehouse. When the warehouse
burns to the ground, Ko is badly injured while
trying to save the family’s heirlooms and docu-
ments. Hideyo and Yoko work hard to nurse their
sister and pay her hospital bills over the next eight
months. Meanwhile, the Kawashima children are
accused of theft, arson, and a double murder that
took place at their old warehouse home. TheyWatkins, Yoko Kawashima 311