work with the police to find the real killers, and
this book, too, ends with a reunion: Father Ka-
washima, who has been a POW, returns to them,
only to be told that his wife died six years ago.
Watkins is also the author of Tales from the
Bamboo Grove (1992), a collection of one Ainu
and five Japanese folktales told around the dinner
table when she was a child. In the foreword, she
explains the context of each tale’s telling. For ex-
ample, “Monkey and Crab,” in which the trickster
monkey learns his lesson, was told her by her fa-
ther when she complained about the school bully.
After graduating from Sagano, Yoko Kawashima
took an intensive English course at a university
and began working at a U.S. Air Force base, where
she met her husband, Donald Watkins. The author
now lives in Cape Cod with her husband and has
four grown children. Major themes of Watkins’s
works include the importance of family bonds,
commitment to preserving Japanese culture, and
her earnest wish for peace.
Sandra S. HughesWhen My Sister Was Cleopatra Moon
Frances Park (2000)
Toggling chapters between the present and the
past in FRANCES PARK’s novel, readers are drawn
into Cleo and Marcy Moon’s turbulent lives. As
teenagers, Cleo is sexy, wild, and fiercely indepen-
dent, but Marcy is plain, studious, and obedient.
Returning home after her first year of college, Cleo
promises adolescent Marcy that the two of them
will have a fabulous summer. Despite Cleo’s wild
lifestyle, Marcy begins to emulate her sister’s cloth-
ing and makeup and even dates a boy who calls her
“Miss Moonface.” When he tries to force himself
onto her, however, she realizes that she does not
want to become her sister. The sisters’ relationship
falls apart as Marcy begins to distance herself from
Cleo’s destructive personality.
When the narrative moves to the present, Cleo’s
husband has just passed away, and she needs Marcy
not for emotional support but to babysit her chil-
dren while she attends a food show in New York
City. Marcy is annoyed that Cleo could think about
a food show in the midst of her husband’s death
and even neglect her children. Determined to “see
Cleo for who she really is” (35), Marcy is convinced
that Cleo is capable of having orchestrated his
death. Concerned about the safety of the children,
Marcy takes troubled teenager Luke and baby June
to White Sky, the Native American community
where she lives with Pablo, her partner. “Cactus
Bear,” the name of Marcy and Pablo’s store, rep-
resents a transcendent moment of peace and tri-
umph that signifies victory, but the real victory is
the reconciliation of the sisters in the finale.
The perpetual absence and untimely death of
Marcy and Cleo’s father and their mother’s inabil-
ity to control her daughters in his absence cast a
dark shadow on the family’s pursuit of the Ameri-
can dream. In the same way that memories of the
Korean War haunt their parents, memories of a
troubled adolescence haunt Cleo and Marcy. With
the father’s death, the mother and Cleo splinter
into their own worlds, leaving young Marcy “all
alone in the world with no one to turn to” (152). In
rescuing June and Luke from their mother, Marcy
is actually inviting Cleo to rescue her from the
solitude that stems from their past. The two stories
weave together different time periods, bridging the
past with the present and creating a new reality for
the Moon sisters.Bibliography
Park, Frances. When My Sister Was Cleopatra Moon.
New York: Hyperion, 2000.
Sarah ParkWhen the Rainbow Goddess Wept
Cecilia Manguerra Brainard (1947– )
Set in the Philippines in an idyllic atmosphere, this
novel opens with vivid descriptions from the voice
of the child-narrator Yvonne Macaraig, whose
childhood will soon be marred by the brutality and
violence of war. Yvonne’s musings in the opening
chapter illustrate the idyllic and peaceful town of
Ubec, where she lives with her extended family.
The distant rumblings and the constant talk of war
among the adults foreshadow a war that will come312 When My Sister Was Cleopatra Moon