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.