Blog #20. "A Glimmer Of Hope—Was That It?" No-No Boy Chapter 11.

So we get to the last blog of the year, 53 in all for the course. Thanks for the effort many of you put into this part of the class. Some of you did this right away, some of you at the most ungodly times (2 in the morning?),  some of you first thing in the morning, some of you minutes before the 8:30 deadline. No matter. You did the work. Good for you.


Here is a brief biography of John Okada. The bio makes an interesting, and probably valid, point: if Okada had made Ichiro more autobiographical, then perhaps the novel would have found an audience in 1957 among Japanese Americans, for whom the novel was clearly aimed. For Okada was really Kenji: a decorated war veteran. But as the bio points out, Okada was drawn to a No-No Boy acquaintance in the camp were both were interned. Okada's brilliance is his ability to understand perfectly the mind of someone who made the opposite choice from himself. His brilliance is his ability to inhabit every mind in his panoramic view of a seething community. Most people you will meet in college and after will never have heard of this novel: but some will. Count those folks as being pretty darn cool.

Anyhow. The book is over. Bull beats Freddie: Ichiro beats Bull: Freddie is "just about cut..in two" (249). Ken is dead. Mrs. Yamada dies a suicide. The community—perhaps the psyche of America itself, circa 1947-1957—is being destroyed from within. Yet...Ichiro feels a "glimmer of hope" (250).

1. So how does Okada conclude this novel? Is it a hopeful ending—do we believe Ichiro? What makes him feel hope? Is he really seeing reason for hope—or, like Emi and her singing "The Star Spangled Banner", is he convincing himself of something to assuage the hopelessness around him? Quote twice from the last chapter; and write several sentences—not just a few thrown together on your phone. Please, think about this question and answer it thoughtfully.

2. Late addition. In today's Slate.com, an article that dovetails all too comfortably in our discussion. Read it here: and take a minute to tell us what you think about it.

See you guys tomorrow.

Blog #19. "He Was Thinking About The Apostrophe, The Topside Comma, The Period With A Tail On It. It Was The Little Scale On Which Hinged The Fortunes Of The Universe." No-No Boy Through 10.

They'll take a trip up to some resort, thinking this is God's green land of democracy for which I killed a dozen Krauts, and get kicked in the face with the unfortunate mistake about the reservation story because he'd signed the letter Ohara and the guy at the resort thought it was good old Irish O'Hara. Tough to have a name like Ohara and feel that maybe when they made up the batch of orders upstairs one of the Lord's workers neglected the apostrophe and do the guy turns up in the U.S.A. a Jap instead of an Irishman. That's beside the point, however. When they find out thet're still Japs, they'll be too busy to be mean to us. (227)

This is Gary who echoes what Ken said back in Chapter 7. The heroes—the men who went to war like Kenji—"'probably make it tough on you [No-No Boys] probably do so out of the misbegotten idea that maybe you're to blame because the good that they thought they were doing by getting killed and shot up doesn't amount to a hill of beans. They just need a little time to get cut down to their own size. Then they'll be the same as you, as bunch of Japs'" (163). So says Ken the war vet, the winner of a Silver Star, the third highest medal a soldier can win. And so says the war resister Gary who is targeted by war vets like Ken ("'Go for broke, you know. You've heard it'" [227]). When the vets can't get at Gary, they, as we know from the reading, target his black friend Birdie, and almost kill him. At the end of the day, the war hero and draft dodger both agree, everyone—the war heroes and the draft dodgers alike—end up being all they are allowed to be in America. Japs.

Think about what we started talking about in class today. Ken dreams of an America where race doesn't matter, an afterlife, a heaven, where there aren't any "Japs or Chinks or Jews or Poles or Niggers or Frenchies, but only people" (165). And if that can't even be attained in heaven, he'd settle for nothingness. We get further with this in second period than fifth, but the question can still be posed. I asked it on a previous entry, but I don't think the section made sense to many until we read it in class today.

1. What does Ken propose as a remedy to the racism that he cannot escape? What is his rationale? And do you agree or disagree with it? Don't think about whether it could ever happen or not—imagine it was possible.

2. In heaven, Ken hopes there is no Jackson Street: no segregation, where, as Gary says later, "God's green land of democracy" exists.  Can there be an American Dream in a country that is segregated by ethnicity, race, or even class? Ichiro says that many ethnic Americans have their own communities (think Buford Highway; think South Dekalb), but Ken says "that doesn't make it right" (164). What do you think?

3. We approach the end of the novel: and Ichiro is finally moving. What's a way in the last couple chapters that we finally see him begin to act in a positive, forward thinking way? Try to not repeat what others have said before you.

Finally. Leave it to Stephen Colbert to lift our—or maybe just my—spirit in the wake of the bombing in Boston, Click on this link and take a look if you like. It takes a lot to uplift me, and this did it.

Blog #18. "'One n A Million.' 'Less Than That. If A Lot More People Were Like Him, There Wouldn't Have Been An Evacuation." No-No Boy Through Chapter 7.

What it amounted to was that there was a Mr. Carrack in Portland, which did not necessarily mean that there were others like him. (169)

"Have a drink for me. Drink to wherever it is I'm headed, and don't let there be any Japs or Chinks or Jews or Poles or Niggers or Frenchies, but only people." (165)

"He didn't really mean it." she replied. "He only meant that things ought to be that way but I think he knew he was only dreaming."
"He did. It's probably what makes him so unhappy and kind of brooding underneath."
"Is he really going to die?" She looked at him pleadingly, as if beseeching him to say it was not true.
All he could do was nod his head. (170)

On  Friday several of you mentioned in both classes how the book has a static feel: it keeps saying the same thing over and over. I get that; I feel you. But I'd have you consider how Okada is possibly—probably? definitely?—playing with a single theme as seen through the eyes of people so traumatized that to see the forest for the trees is nearly impossible. I would propose that the novel, messy and repetitious as it is, is asking (as we said in second period Friday), "Is there really an American Dream?" That's it. Of course with that inquiry comes a host of associated questions. "If there is an AD, what exactly it is? And is it available for everyone? And if it is, why did it fail these immigrants and their American children? And if it isn't available for everyone, can it possibly exist? Can a dream that is called American be a real dream if it is available for only some Americans?"

So:

1. What do you think of my hypothesis? Do you agree? Disagree? Why or why not? What in the novel helps support your response?

2. Ken, for me, at least, is the tragic figure of the novel. When several of you said on Friday the book was depressing because Ichiro is such a depressing (and depressed) character, I agreed. But what I want to add is that the true bleakness of the novel is represented by Kenji. What do you think of that statement? Agree or disagree.

3. Kenji has a take on how to solve the problem of America—or at least the problem the novel presents. "'Go someplace where there isn't another Jap within a thousand miles. Marry a white girl or a Negro or an Italian or even a Chinese. Anything but a Japanese. After a few generations of that, you've got the thing beat...'" "'It's a fine dream, but you're not the first,'" Ichiro replies. Like so often in the novel, it's a position left uncommented on by Okada. Emi says Ken really didn't mean it; Ichiro thinks he did. What do you think of his solution to the get "the thing beat"?

That's enough for now. See you all tomorrow.

Blog #17. "And There Was No Answer Because There Was No Pattern And All He Could Feel Was That The World Was Full Of Hatred." No-No Boy Though Chapter 6. rld Was Full Of Hate

"If you're not white, you're not wanted."
—Jenny Chagnon.

As with Drama City, this novel, to me, at least, is so dense and rich and complicated and confusing that I feel like we've only scratched its surface. I want another month to study this book. As Sam said Wednesday, it really is a psychological novel: Jake supported this by noting, correctly, that narrative-wise, very little has happened in the book: what, are we a week into Ichiro's return to Seattle? He's been to school; he's been to the Club Oriental; he's been beaten by his brother; he finds some degree of solace with Emi; and then we switch to Ken's world, and we get a close look at his family over dinner, his trip back to the Club Oriental, and then his and Ichiro's trip to Portland and another operation on his leg. Not much. Yet we are getting, thematically, a look into what America means to a specific group of immigrants and their children and their community; we are getting to see what racism can do to a ethnic minority; we are seeing the American Dream through the eyes of those who have had it torn away from them...and perhaps returned.

I'll shut up now. Jenny's quote above comes from Wednesday as we talked about race and American identity in the novel. So:

1. Do you agree with her statement as relating to the book? Why or why not? And if it is true, in your opinion, can the same be said for today? Why or why not?

2. We get a glimpse of a happy family in the Kannos, in that great dinner scene. It's so clearly—to me, at least—a scene from a Norman Rockwell painting. The Kannos are the American Dream, right down to the baseball on the television. They are the opposite of the Yamadas—this is an American success story. Or is it? Say why you answer what you do.

3. A scene or moment from Chapters 5 or 6 that particularly struck you—and how so?

Tomorrow we'll all be tired, some sunburned, but we'll do our best to soldier on. See you then.

Blog #16. "We've Both Got Big Problems, Bigger Than Most People. That Ought To Mean Something." No-No Boy Through Chapter 3.

So says Ken Kanno, an old friend of Ichiro's that Ichiro runs into on his way out of the University. Kenji is Ichiro's double in the novel: the same age; just as aimless; and questioning his actions constantly. He also is a war hero, one who "had every right to laugh and love and hope" (63). And he is dying as his amputated leg rots away what's left of its stump. "Am I a hero?" he asks Ichiro (60). And he then asks Ichiro if he would trade fifty years of life for two years of being a war hero. And Ichiro says he would.

One of the hardest parts of this book is figuring exactly what position John Okada takes on what he is presenting. Are we supposed to agree with Ken that he is not a hero? Are we supposed to agree with Ichiro that he doesn't deserve to be accepted by America, a country he feels he has betrayed? Did Bob Kumasaka really die bravely, pinged by a random sniper? Are "homes and cars and money" (34) lost really worth the price of citizenship? What Okada does do clearly (and brilliantly in my opinion) is paint a picture of a community in agony; and if the streets Ichiro walks in Seattle "are part of the city which is part of the state and the country and the nation that is America" (34), then Okada is portraying in some great sense a country in agony.

1. What scene or moment in Chapter 3 struck you particularly? And why? Quote in your response.

2. What I wanted to ask today, for it is the question the novel forces us to ask. What would you have done in Ichiro's place when he faces the judge in Chapter 1? Would you have refused to fight as Ichiro and the others did? Or would you have done what Bob and a thousand others did, including Ken, and gone to war? And why?


3. A text-oriented question: Ichiro goes to visit his old Engineering professor, Baxter Brown, and what follows is an uncomfortable reunion. At the end of it, Ichiro thinks, "That wasn't the way I wanted it to happen. What happened? He was nice enough. Shook hands, talked, smiled. Still, it was all wrong...Was it him or was it me? Him or me? He or I? Brown or Itchy? It wasn't Brown, of course...No, Brown is still Brown. It is I who reduces conversation to the inconsequential" (57). Is Ichiro—Itchy—correct here? Why or why not?


There might be a short quiz in class tomorrow, so be sure to do your reading. See you all then.

Blog #15. "I Am Not Your Son And I Am Not Japanese And I Am Not American." No-No Boy Through 25.

There was a time when I was your son. There was a time that I no longer remember when you used to smile a mother's smile and tell me stories about gallant and fierce warriors who protected their lords with blades of shining steel and about the old woman who found a peach in the stream and too took it home and, when her husband split it in half, a husky little boy tumbled out to fill their hearts with boundless joy. I was that boy in the peach and you were the old woman and we were Japanese...(15)

Well, I was that boy too. Momotaro is a classic Japanese folk tale, a book version of which my mother gave me when I was in first grade. In fact, for Halloween at my elementary school that year I came dressed up as the famous peach boy. You can bet there was nobody else in Winthrop, Massachusetts, 1964, wearing that costume. I would have preferred having had a Batman or Superman costume and not some weird foreign costume with miniature samurai swords stick in a sash around my waist.

No-No Boy is many things: a historical novel about an event and time that is rarely written about; an immigrant story; a story about what it means to be American. The book, originally published in 1957, disappeared quickly, rejected by the exact audience one would think would have devoured it—Japanese Americans. It was rediscovered in the 1970s by a group of young Asian American writers and has not been out of print since. It is a classic of post war American literature. As playwright Frank Chin writes in the afterward of the novel: "Back in 1957 John said things Asian Americans are afraid to think, much less say today [1976]. Things that every yellow feels. I've known all my life that I am not Chinese and I am not white American. I was brought up to believe there was nothing else for me to be but a Chinese foreigner or a fake white American...The [1920's] produced a generation of Asian Americans who didn't know who they were. We still don't. John Okada shows the 'identity crisis' to be both totally real and absolutely fake in a book that is still too strong for many yellows to read." I don't know if Asian Americans feel this way today, 37 years later: maybe we'll talk about this. I do know I did—my generation, the children of Ichiro's generation, many of whom only learned of that time in American history from school. Much as you learned of it.

Enough of me. Some questions for you:

1. Reactions to the novel so far?

2. What moment or scene especially jumped out at you—and why? Quote in your reponse.

 3. Finish this statement: Ichiro Yamada is ____________. And then explain your statement.

Finally: go this site. It has good pictures of what we will talk about in the novel, and shows where the film we watched clips from today—Come See The Paradise (1990)—got many of its images. In particular, the banner in the window of the business that reads I AM AN AMERICAN, and the picture of the little girls waiting to get on the buses, the white tags pinned to them.

Hang in there guys: 50 more minutes of me, and then you have a week off.

Blog #14. "Show Yourself, Thought Nigel. I Am Gonna Murder The Fuck Out Of You Tonight." Drama City to The End.

"Things happened to that dog on this cruel earth to make it the way it was. Wasn't his fault, but still. It's not like God is gonna step in now, point his finger down from heaven, and touch that animal, make it so it can be around people and other animals the right way" (230).

"Maybe. But I'm still gonna avenge my friend. Rico Miller? Shit, motherfuckers like him, they're in their element behind those walls. I ain't gonna let him have that gift. Boy needs to be put down like an animal...I'm not goin' back to where I been. I'm gonna be at work tomorrow and the day after that. But I'm still gonna do this thing tonight."
"It don't work this way."
"We'll see."
"You been out of it so long, you forgot how it goes. You go in, you got to go in fierce. Forget they're human. Forget that you're human too."
"I know it. Remember, I've done this before."
""But you cleaned your slate. Now, what, you gonna go and throw away your soul again?"
"What about yours?"
"Mine's been lost forever..." (257-258)

"There go my name, Mama," he said, pointing happily at the tree. (266)

He walked down to the steps where Melvin Lee lay unconscious in the grass. He shot Lee twice in the chest, holstered the Colt, and walked on.

Nigel could see this boy was not  much older than Michael Butler. Or Rico Miller, the boy he'd just killed. (274)

A couple of teenage boys, school age but not in school, walked across the field and chuckled at him, standing there wearing a uniform a uniform and holding a bag of shit as they passed.  Go ahead and laugh, thought Lorenzo. I don't care. (279)

Deacon's troops were still out there, working the corners. And if you were to go away, there would always be other young men to replace the Marcus Griffins, Lawrence Grahams, Nigel Johnsons, and Deacon Taylors. Lorenzo understood why boys went down to the corners; he had been one of them and he knew. Still, the knowledge didn't lessen the bitterness he felt.  (281)

Lorenzo said a prayer for all the people who looked after him and were looking after him still: Mark Christianson and Irena Tovar, his grandmother, and Miss Lopez. 
"...I'm dating a man, a police officer. I don't know where it's going, but it's good today. And that's what I'm focusing on, today."
Lorenzo said a special prayer for the soul of Nigel.
"...so thank you for letting me share," said Rachel Lopez. (287)

So everything comes together, almost all by happenstance, mistake, and misunderstanding. If DeEric hadn't embarrassed Melvin Lee in front of Rico...If Rachel hadn't come to Lee's apartment when Rico was hiding out there (or had come an hour or two earlier when Lee was there)...If Lorenzo hadn't seen Rico's car at the dogfight...If Lorenzo hadn't spent two more minutes to find out what that scream was about in the hospital...If Nigel hadn't lowered his gun in front of Griff...

Then again: if the schools worked...if the police didn't take their time getting to dogfights or make cursory drives through drug areas like Columbia Heights where "sales of one kind or another had been ongoing for over thirty years" (147)...if "a federal law enacted in 1996 [that] imposed a lifetime ban on female offenders from receiving family benefits and food stamps" (88) didn't exist...if the drug organizations didn't follow the model of corporate America, where workers—like Rico and Lee—are disposable, despite all the talk of their value to the company...if people were just smarter and stronger and kinder...then Michael and DeEric and Rico and Melvin and Nigel would all be alive at the end of the book.

I apologize: I wish I had done a better job of elucidating the depth of this book—a depth some of you I know do not think exists in it. I do think it is there, though, even in spite of my fumbling the presentation of it. In my mind, the book is a heartbreaking depiction of American at the precipice. It's the Youngers' Chicago forty six later; it's Gatsy pushed to its logical end, where bootlegging has become drug dealing, and Gatsby's huge, ugly car (as Elizabeth pointed out in class) has become the ubiquitous Escalade (starting, today, at $63,000 and topping out at eighty two eight). An immigrant couple's lifetime of honest work becomes the rationale for a perverted vision of the American Dream where imprisonment and/or death replaces the son who becomes an Army general and the daughter who becomes a chemist at the National Institute of Health.

So:

1. Your reaction to the end of the book? Is it a happy ending? A sad ending? Exactly what kind of ending was it for you—and how so?

2. You may have addressed this above, but it's still a major question for our understanding of what the book is about. Your reaction to Rico's— and Melvin Lee's—death? Do you feel satisfied by their deaths? Are we supposed to agree with Lorenzo that he "needs to be put down like an animal"?

3. We talked a lot about Rachel earlier in our reading, but we haven't talked very specifically about Lorenzo. At the end of the book, what do you think of him? He is a man who has done much violence in his life—in many ways, he is a mirror of Rico—and in the book, he does violence too (arguably unnecessary violence): he is, in many ways, not a good man. Is he a good man at the end of the book?

4. Last question: is Nigel a good man at the end of the book? Yes? No? Why—in a couple of sentences.

It's just taken me over an hour to write this entry. I'm not expecting an hour of writing from you, but nor do I expect five minutes on this either. Give yourself twenty minutes or so to respond.  See you all tomorrow.