Describing my Experience
Farewell to Manzanar is yet another recommendation from my mom. She discovered this book while she was teaching high school in Wells, Maine; it was the first time she’d ever heard of the Japanese American Internment. The book is a memoir and it follows the author’s childhood as she was growing up in Manzanar internment camp (which is located in California, about 230 miles North of Los Angeles).
It’s pretty short, and I’m about halfway through right now. At first, I wasn’t sure how to describe the experience I was having with it. It’s not that I’m not enjoying the book—I am, but I think what I’m really enjoying is that I’m learning more about the internment camps. I first learned about the Japanese American Internment when I was in 8th grade, but I honestly don’t remember much, so I’m trying to make an effort to learn more (and remember it). What’s interesting about this book is that I almost feel like I’m reading a textbook, even though it’s a narrative recollection of the author’s life; the story feels like it’s being presented as information, not necessarily as a narrative. I think that’s because the author, Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, isn’t giving the reader very much room to form their own realizations, connections, or emotions. She describes emotions and historical nuances very eloquently, but the way she writes feels similar to the way that I might write a literary analysis or a history paper.
I actually think she makes really good use of descriptive language and literary devices. Using just words, she “paints” really clear pictures of her surroundings and the scenes that she experienced as a child. But I don’t feel very emotionally connected to the story. I think it’s because the narrative voice doesn’t match up with the protagonist. What I mean is that, in the story, the author is a child, but the narration is much more mature and is clearly the voice of the author as an adult. There’s dissonance between who I’m told the protagonist is and the voice she’s speaking in (the memoir is written in the first person). Because of that, the narrative isn’t very emotionally compelling.
Classifying my Experience and the Narrative Technologies Prompting It
The more I read of Farewell to Manzanar, the more appropriate I think it is to classify my experience as Lacking Emotional Connection. Because the author is writing very retrospectively—using I Voice— there’s a distance between the narrator as the author and the narrator as a character. It feels like Jeanne is trying to reflect on her past without having to relive all of the negative experiences she had. Throughout the book, Jeanne is a kid, ranging in age from 7 to 10 years old (she probably ages more, but I haven’t finished the book yet); the narrative voice is very much that of an adult, but the author’s use of first person makes it hard to connect with the protagonist because her voice doesn’t match what we know about her. I’ve been calling this Narrative Dissonance: when the narrative voice of a novel written in the first person doesn’t match up with the description of the protagonist. I’m hesitant to propose this as a technology, because is it really a technology if the author didn’t do it on purpose? I don’t know, but I think it’s functioning as more of a technology than as an experience.
The result of this dissonance is that I don’t feel emotionally invested in the story. I’m still interested in it on a historical, factual level, like I mentioned earlier, but I don’t have a good sense of who the protagonist is, so it’s difficult for me to connect to her and interact with her story emotionally. Furthermore, the distance between the author and herself as a character is what allows her to recount her life to us almost through analysis, instead of allowing the reader to process the story on their own.
Features Prompting my Experience
The following excerpt comes from a scene in which Jeanne’s sister-in-law has just given birth to a baby boy at the Manzanar hospital. The whole family had been worried that she wouldn’t survive, but after the baby is born, Jeanne’s Mama comes running outside to tell Papa:
“Ko! Ko, it’s a boy!”
[Papa’s] face gave way. His eyes filled. “A boy!”
“Yes!”
“And Eleanor?”
“Yes. Okay!”
“Okay.”
“They’re both okay.”
His tears let go, unchecked. Mama was already crying. She began to talk excitedly, jabbering the details. as the news sunk in, my fear was replaced by an odd detachment. The burden fell away, leaving me afloat, and I was a spectator witnessing the nearest to a love scene I would ever see between them. My own perception removed me form it. I was more awed than aware, but I knew whatever I was watching was somehow both tender and profound, with an intimacy that made me invisible to them. (Wakatsuki Houston 87)
In this scene, Jeanne is ten years old, but, in my opinion, the narration is extremely mature and doesn’t sound like it would come from a ten year old. I used this excerpt as an example of the Narrative Dissonance that I was describing earlier, but I also think it highlights the lack of emotional connection between the author and the reader. Jeanne’s description of this moment is very acute and well-phrased, but she didn’t give me a chance to feel any of it for myself. There’s a strange detachedness between the author, her past self, and the reader, and it inhibits the reader from interacting with the story in a meaningful way.
That detachedness is even more obvious in an excerpt from the first few pages of the story. I shared some of it in class, but I’ve extended it a little bit in order to highlight the difference between the context of the story and the author’s voice. The following scene takes place shortly after Pearl Harbor is bombed. Jeanne’s father is a Japanese immigrant, but he’s been living in the United States for many, many years at this point, working as a fisherman. Before Jeanne and the rest of her family are forced to relocate, her father is taken away to a prison camp in North Dakota because he was suspected of delivering oil to Japanese submarines offshore. It’s important to remember that in this scene, Jeanne has recently turned 7:
If Papa were trying to avoid arrest, he wouldn’t have gone near that island. But I think he knew it was futile to hide out or resist. The next morning two FBI men in fedora hats and trench coats—like out of a thirties movie—knocked on [the] door, and when they left, Papa was between them. He didn’t struggle. There was no point to it. He had become a man without a country. The land of his birth was at war with America; yet after thirty-five years here he was still prevented by law from becoming an American citizen. He was suddenly a man with no rights who looked exactly like the enemy.
About all the had left at this point was his tremendous dignity. He was tall for a Japanese man, nearly six feet, lean and hard and healthy-skinned from the sea. He was over fifty. Ten children and a lot of hard luck had worn him down, had worn away most of the arrogance he came to this country with. But he still had dignity, and he would not let those deputies push him out the door. He led them.
[…]
My mother began to weep. It seems now that she wept for days. She was a small, plump woman who laughed easily and cried easily, but I had never seen her cry like this. I couldn’t understand it. I remember clinging to her legs, wondering why everyone was crying. This was the beginning of a terrible, frantic time for all my family. But I myself didn’t cry about Papa, or have any inkling of what was wrenching Mama’s heart, until the next time I saw him, almost a year later. (Wakatsuki Houston 6-7)
This scene exemplifies the dissonance between the narrative voice and the character who’s supposed to be the narrator. No seven year old watching their father get taken away by the FBI is thinking, “He’s become a man without a country.” They just aren’t. Again, I think Jeanne does a really good job of describing very precise emotions and retrospectively analyzing a scene/experience from her past, but she doesn’t allow the reader to build up those emotions or get to know the characters for themself.
Featured Image
Cover art copyright © 1995 by Pamela Patrick.
