BOOKS! (The Neighbor Favor + Afrekete)

Life is so funny. I was so looking forward to reclaiming my bookworm self in 2024, and life basically patted me on the head and said, "Aww, that's cute." After writing my last book review in February, I finished reading a romance novel in March, with hopes to finish the anthology I planned to pair it with and write a new review that same month, or in April at the latest. But then I had an interestingly ridiculous side quest as a bobarista (don't ask), and also had to spend two separate weeks in Louisville trying to declutter Grandpa's house. Which didn't leave me with the emotional capacity to read much other than fluff so I could still call myself reading something. So although I did finish two books of early 2000s Black erotica in the meantime (more about those in my next book review), I didn't actually finish the anthology until mid-August, as in two weeks ago. But that's okay! What matters is I finally made my way back here, ready to give y'all what I've got. First up, a Black romance novel (is there any other kind?) about two grown but adorably awkward book nerds in NYC, who fall in love once via email and again as neighbors, and who reignite each other's publishing industry dreams. Then, an anthology of Black lesbian writing from 1995 that illuminates how much Black women's relationships to freedom and desire (the freedom to desire) have evolved, and how much the causes for their concern have largely stayed the same.

 

The Neighbor Favor by Kristina Forest

This was a Christmas 2023 present that I received from either my mom or my aunt; I sent them the same Amazon wishlist and at this point I can't recall who gave me what. I'm certain that I heard about The Neighbor Favor on Instagram, but I can't recall if I discovered it via Black Girl That Reads or if I discovered it on my own. Either way, I saw that it was about bookish Black people (my kind of people!) and that it would have a sex scene or two, so on the wishlist it went!

 

Lily, the youngest of three daughters from New Jersey, is a 25-year-old overworked and underpaid nonfiction editorial assistant who dreams of becoming a fully-fledged children's book editor. Her favorite book is an out-of-print fantasy novel about Black elves called The Elves of Ceradon, written by a mysterious, supposedly British author named "N.R. Strickland" who never wrote another book. On a sweltering day when Lily is stuck on a stopped MTA train, she googles Strickland as she's wont to do, happens to find his new website, and accidentally hits "send" on an email that she absentmindedly drafts to him before passing out due to the heat. Nick, an only child from North Carolina, is a 27-year-old recluse who got his first book published in college, but retreated into travel writing when that book (the aforementioned Black elf novel) flopped. He only entertains occasional flings wherever he happens to be on assignment, because a lifetime of witnessing his parents' toxic relationship has convinced him that he's unworthy of love, plus he's afraid of using and hurting people like his father did. (He created the "N.R. Strickland" alias and phony British backstory so his father can't track him down asking for money.) 

 

Nick only has a new website because his best friend and new literary agent Marcus created one for him, and he's shocked to receive Lily's email but responds in kind anyway. Cue eight months of correspondence wherein Nick and Lily become smitten with each other, even as Nick never divulges his real name or origins. But just when they make plans to video chat so they can see each other's faces and potentially move the relationship forward, he ghosts her out of shame for lying to her. Months later, Lily is temporarily living in a swanky new Union Square apartment building with her celebrity stylist sister Violet until she can save up enough for her own solo apartment. She's become infatuated with her "Fine as Hell Neighbor," with whom she shares elevator small talk since they live on the same floor and frequently cross paths, but she doesn't realize this man (Nick) is the author who ghosted her. And Nick, who stopped travel writing and moved into this building after Marcus secured a lucrative new book deal for him, doesn't realize she's Lily. However, when an invitation to discuss N.K. Jemison's Broken Earth trilogy (!!!) turns into a make-out session in Lily's (Violet's) apartment, Nick panics upon recognizing her rare male calico named Tomcat and the lily tattoo on her foot that were mentioned in their emails, and he literally runs away from her.

 

Lily respects Nick's insistence that they remain platonic but also asks him to help her find a date for Violet's upcoming wedding, because she's tired of her family always trying to set her up, and she's witnessed Nick help two of their middle aged neighbors get together. Nick reluctantly agrees, and they go on outings that are meant to help Lily snag a man, but are really dates that they don't realize are dates: a trip to IKEA where Lily helps commitment-averse Nick pick out a bed frame, a '70s-themed birthday party at Marcus's apartment in Brooklyn where they almost kiss again, a visit to Strand Book Store where they bond over an appreciation for science fiction and fantasy, and an annual birthday cookout at Lily's family home in Jersey. The two get hot and heavy in Lily's childhood bedroom, but Nick's insecurity and self-loathing (plus another interference from Tomcat) get in the way again. These introverted overthinkers are in love with each other, and a real relationship between them is possible, but first they have their own respective priorities to sort out. Lily must push through her shyness and get used to standing up for herself, which includes putting her boss in check, pursuing her dream job, getting her well-meaning family off her back, and being forthright about the man she truly wants. And amidst a resurgence for The Elves of Ceradon and the chance to finally continue writing the series, Nick must overcome his fears enough to confront his parents, go public with his real identity, and make amends with Lily after telling her the truth about everything.

I already decided that I would love The Neighbor Favor forever when I clocked four brief but significant Broken Earth trilogy mentions. Four! And yes I counted, because that trilogy changed my life! (If you haven't yet read my very lengthy reviews of all three books, which are partially reviews and partially reader's guides that I wrote for myself because I was in too deep, then do yourself a favor and read them here: The Fifth Season, The Obelisk Gate, The Stone Sky.) Kristina Forest name drops a plethora of authors and book titles, but it's a desire to discuss the work of my queen, the N.K. Jemisin, that makes Lily and Nick's first kiss possible. Lily notices Nick carrying a copy of The Fifth Season around, she works up the courage to tell him that it's one of her favorite books (I literally wrote in the margins for this moment, "Jemisin making love and courage possible"), he works up the courage to invite her to talk about the entire trilogy sometime (my margin notes continued, "I WOULD MARRY THIS MAN! TODAY!"), and boom. Lips locking. You want to talk about impact? Jemisin's pen is so powerful that a fellow author made her work a key plot point in the romantic development between two fictional people. She's influencing authors in genres that she doesn't even primarily write in! That's impact! Anyway, as I was saying, the Broken Earth mentions made me ridiculously happy, I appreciate Kristina Forest for including them, and as a fellow Jemisin fan I will love The Neighbor Favor forever.

After the reading slump I've been in since the beginning of 2023 (bookending the year with your mom in the hospital and then your grandpa leaving this world will do that to you, I realize in hindsight), reading this novel was such a breeze. The Neighbor Favor reminded me just how warm and unencumbered reading can be; I felt like I was gliding through this one. The story is light and has relatively low stakes, but isn't shallow or hollow. If romance novels were desserts designated by drama and "spice" levels, and if Oniomoh's Just for the Cameras were the super rich banana pudding ice cream that I made for the July 4th spread last month, then The Neighbor Favor would be the yogurt parfait I occasionally make for myself when I need "a little something sweet." (That's plain yogurt, honey, granola, and blackberries, for whoever's curious.) Easily digestible, pleasurable but not too decadent, a bit of conflict to add texture, a little tartness to refresh the palate, and just sweet enough. Read The Neighbor Favor if you need something that's just sweet enough! Also if you love books, are estranged from and/or afraid of your father, need a vision of a male partner who actually reads (and especially reads fiction), have aspirations to be published or work in the publishing industry, or are perplexed by people pushing you to date more. 

 

Favorite quotes:

"Throughout the entire day he'd been asked if he were her boyfriend and he wished that were the case. He wished he'd grown up as a normal person with a normal family, without any stresses or fears. He wished he didn't have to hold Lily at bay, when all he wanted was to pull her closer. He wanted nothing more than to be worthy of her" (221).

 

"Lily couldn't believe that she was listening to one of her favorite authors read from one of her favorite books. She'd read the Dragons of Blood series when she was a shy, friendless teenager who wanted nothing more than to escape and have a real adventure of her own. She looked over at Nick... Bringing Lily here tonight was the nicest, most thoughtful thing anyone had ever done for her.

 

She was going to climb him like a tree later" (327).

Afrekete: An Anthology of Black Lesbian Writing edited by Catherine E. McKinley and L. Joyce DeLaney

The Neighbor Favor put me in a literary mood, so I reached for one of my more literary TBRs to read next. This is the third from a handful of books I bought at a paperback-focused indie bookstore called Carol's last year (along with Will to Love and Adèle). Having never heard of this anthology before, I mostly bought it because I was so surprised to see it there, in one of the back rooms of a store manned by an elderly white lady, in a run-down strip mall, in a very white, pretty conservative, suburb. Purchasing Afrekete in that situation felt so rebellious that I almost didn't care about whether or not I'd resonate with its contents. Fortunately for me, resonate I do! Also fortunately for me, as I progressed through the book this year I found the original receipt still tucked between its latter pages! Published in 1995, my copy of Afrekete was originally purchased in June of that same year, at the Dearborn location of a now-nonexistent bookstore franchise called B. Dalton Bookseller, for $14.00 (equivalent to about $29.00 today). I don't think I paid any more than $5.00 for it at Carol's.

 

Although Afrekete contains 20 pieces of Black lesbian writing in the form of short stories, poems, and essays, editors McKinley and DeLaney acknowledge in the introduction that while "lesbian" is an umbrella term they deeply respect, it doesn't necessarily carry the same meaning or relevance for all of the featured authors. Some entries regard lesbianism and feminism as intertwined, and proudly wield the term "lesbian" as an act of political and personal self-determination. Some feature characters who have never openly claimed the label, despite having had numerous female lovers, because of the times they grew up in. Some don't mention the word "lesbian" at all because the woman-loving depicted makes the lesbianism obvious, or because other words are used to describe the same orientation. Conversely, some don't seem to be, at least not too obviously, about queerness at all. Nonetheless, every entry is written by a queer Black woman who falls under that lesbian umbrella in some way, enough to merit being included in this collection. In that regard, I respect McKinley and DeLaney's judgment, and I especially respect the reverence they show for Audre Lorde. As further explained in the introduction, the book's title is the name of the last female lover mentioned in Zami, Lorde's "biomythography" that was an influential form of representation for Black lesbians in the 1980s and '90s. Fittingly, the first story included in this anthology is "Tar Beach", the chapter from Zami that relays Lorde's summer fling in Harlem with that same Afrekete ("Kitty"), amidst the Black lesbian club and house party scenes of the 1950s. And fittingly, the anthology closes with another work of Lorde's, a mournful yet exuberant poem titled "Today Is Not the Day" from April 1992 (seven months before Lorde's passing) when Lorde was knowingly dying from cancer and thinking about the children and life partner she'd leave behind, not "today", but inevitably.

 

Most of the entries are set in New York City, but Boston, Oakland, London, Gary, rural Texas, and even outer space are represented as well. Although there are a couple entries that I have no interest in reading again, I do believe that every single one of them deserves to at least be read once. It was difficult for me to narrow them down, and I'm leaving out quite a few favorites here, but I've decided to use the rest of this review to highlight the entries that have left the most lasting impact on me thus far.

 

"Tar Beach" (Audre Lorde) is such a strong opening for this anthology, and considering that I didn't even know that such a robust lesbian scene even existed in the 1950s, I appreciate how much Lorde's descriptions helped situate me within that time period. Imagine my shock and amusement to read mention of party platters of roast beef folded to resemble vulvas, and lovers in bed engaging in food play (the sexual kind) with plantains, bananas, and avocados. I truly had no idea women were getting down like that back then! But I digress. After previously dancing with Afrekete/Kitty at a house party in 1955, Lorde is mourning a break-up when she meets Kitty again at a club in 1957, and their summer fling commences that night. In addition to being a ravishingly beautiful and fashionable dark-skinned woman, Kitty is also a precursor to multiple women (both real and fictional) mentioned elsewhere in this anthology, who leave their hometowns behind in search of broader options for work and for living, dating, and expressing themselves as lesbians.

 

Having never done sex work, I did not expect to relate to Jocelyn Maria Taylor's "Testimony of a Naked Woman" as much as I do. In it, she discusses finding a balance between living out her radical politics as a Black lesbian feminist while also stripping to survive, since working as a stripper provides faster cash and more freedom over her time than a regular job. As a DC native and media activist who moved to New York in 1989, she describes stripping as an "exercise in detachment," leaving her politics at the door so she can focus on getting the money she needs to afford the activities and projects that mean the most to her. But despite the need to detach, Taylor also finds herself coming into her own sexual agency and erotic self through performing as a stripper. So even though the liberation to be gained from working in such a sexist environment is limited, the job becomes a jumping-off point for her to explore exhibitionism as a form of self-love and activism. This essay gave me so much perspective on my own survival job as a bobarista (again, don't ask), where I similarly had to turn my brain off and disassociate to help the time go by, but was also able to find those pockets of the job that fed my personal interests. (These included interacting with people more, making things with my hands, tasting and experimenting with new flavors, and even discovering new music via the Spotify playlists that my co-workers would put on.) I still think about this essay and feel greatly encouraged, and I wish I could find more about Taylor other than this bio, this video, and this blurb, because I would love to be able to write her and say, "Thank you."

Ooh, the drama and tragedy of "Water Call" by Helen Elaine Lee! A disabled older woman named Ouida remembers the sound of rushing water calling to her from the afterlife, as she almost died decades ago from blood loss on the ride home from a back-alley abortion. Described as still loving men while also being in a committed relationship with a woman, young Ouida cheated on her girlfriend Zella with two different men. After confessing to Zella and asking for help handling the resultant pregnancy, Zella got the money and information needed to arrange the only option they had, since young Ouida didn't want to disrupt the life she'd built, and abortion wasn't legal yet. Post-procedure, as Zella frantically drove around trying to find a doctor who wasn't too scared to help them for fear of legal penalty, young Ouida lost consciousness. In her mind, she came upon the entrance to the afterlife (described as a naturalistic, secret, blooming place" with water spilling over rocks), which she could behold but was barred from entering just yet, because it wasn't her time to die. This was a vision of one's (would-be) final moments that I latched onto as I read, given how much sorrow and curiosity I still have about what my unconscious grandpa's final moments were like before he died last November. Where did he go in his mind? Could he see the other side before entering it? Did he truly have to navigate that all by himself without a presence to comfort and guide him? I don't know the answers to these questions, but the vision Lee offers is still of immense comfort to me. 

Michelle Parkerson's "Odds and Ends (A New Lesbian Fable)" is a short, tragic, post-apocalyptic love story set in outer space in the year 2068, when white people cease to exist organically but continue warring for dominance and invading galaxies as clones. Amidst these clones prowling everywhere, secret girlfriends Loz (a lieutenant) and Sephra (a demolitions expert) are women warriors from rival Black factions, hailing from different sectors of the universe. Literal star-crossed lovers, who've just made love and then parted to serve their separate causes, already longing for their next rendezvous... not knowing that their last embrace was truly their last. When I made notes about this story on my phone, I enthusiastically declared, "This story needs to be on screen! Give me a short film at least!" But Parkerson's paragraph in the "Biographies" section of Afrekete has since informed me that she did in fact release a 28-minute sci-fi short film titled Odds and Ends (a New-Age Amazon Fable) in 1993. As far as I can tell right now, the film is only accessible online through The Criterion Channel.

 

In the essay "Wink of an Eye" Jewelle Gomez explains how despite having a shared history of oppression and a shared awareness of "The Movement" for Black liberation, those commonalities were not enough to sustain healthy platonic relationships with the straight Black men she would've liked to build solidarity with in the '90s. She describes witnessing how straight Black men had grown more bitter, more self-interested (read: misogynist), and more capitalistic since her father's time, and how she instead found the solidarity and community she was looking for with gay Black men. These men, her friends, saw her as an artist and a person rather than an afterthought or a lesser being to be dominated. Reading this essay made me uncomfortable because the notion of straight Black men becoming impossible to deal with sounds way too familiar in 2024, where social media has exacerbated inane "gender wars" arguments, emboldened Black incels, and given a platform to self-described "high value men" who make their living from constantly scrutinizing, demonizing, and demeaning Black women. Gomez's essay is a sobering reminder of how much progress we haven't yet made over the past 30 years.

 

"Kaleidoscope" (Jamika Ajalon) is a short story in which letters and journal entries reveal how a lesbian couple's insecurities about not being Black enough for their New York hotep artist community cause seemingly insurmountable conflict within their relationship. One woman is American, dark-skinned, and unambiguously Black, but is discounted for being gay and not adhering to expectations of how a "sista" should be. The other woman is British, biracial, moneyed, and light-skinned, but her gayness is overlooked in favor of her proximity to whiteness, which the male members of their community fetishize her for. Also included in this story are time-traveling dreams ignited by a supposedly magical stone, with appearances by dream versions of Black literary heroes like Lorraine Hansberry and James Baldwin. I most appreciate this story for its more direct framing of Nella Larsen's Passing as the lesbian saga that it already is.

 

I cannot understate how vital Linda Villarosa's "Revelations" still is, even today, because religion-based homophobia within the Black community is still a problem, and Black LGBTQ people are still having to rebut the same tired arguments and the same misused Bible verses! Villarosa (a former executive editor of ESSENCE Magazine) uses this essay to lay out her trajectory from co-authoring two 1991 ESSENCE articles with her mom about coming out as a lesbian and the political implications of Black homophobia, to being thrust into the spotlight and booked for countless speaking engagements, to being verbally attacked by religious people (most painfully Black religious people) both in writing and in person. All of this led her to investigate the Bible verses most frequently being thrown at her, and contemplate her own spirituality to figure out where she stood on the issue of faith and queerness. She recounts eventually finding community at a gay Black church in New York, and also building up the muscle to gracefully shut down bigots who would use the Q&A portions of her public appearances to condemn her to hell in front of her audiences.

 

And then there's "Ruby" by Cynthia Bond. Lord have mercy. This story tore me up. After spending her adult life in New York City, and increasingly fearing that her unspecified mental illness will jeopardize her girlfriend's safety, the titular Ruby Belle moves back to what's left of her grandfather's land in rural Texas. Her mental state rapidly declines in the six years that follow, because the losses she has suffered are too great. Most of her grandfather's acres were sold off prior to her arrival, his house that she now lives in alone is dilapidated, she left her love and her artistry back in New York, her bodily autonomy has been violated by countless men since infancy, and she's miscarried multiple pregnancies as a result of local men repeatedly coming to her home and raping her since she returned to Texas. Ruby disassociates to the point of abandoning all social connections and bodily functions, spending her time in nature absorbing the earth's "knowing," and sensing herself transform into the rain, mud puddles, sugar cane, stones, red dirt roads, lakes, and trees that surround her. Ruby's psychosis reminded me so vividly of Han Kang's The Vegetarian, in which a South Korean woman stops eating meat, then eventually stops eating altogether and envisions herself turning into a tree, because she can no longer bear the cruelty of the world and the ways people (especially men) use and consume other living beings. And how could I not think about Toni Morrison's Beloved, Bernice McFadden's Nowhere Is a Place, and N.K. Jemisin's The Fifth Season when reading the passage about a newly fallen 400-year-old tree near Ruby's land that contains the secret memories of brutalized and enslaved women and girls, including memories of infanticide that women committed to protect their babies from slavery. Upon googling Cynthia Bond, I realized that "Ruby" was the precursor to a novel of the same name published in 2014. I'd seen the cover countless times but never took paid attention to it until now. And I certainly had no idea that Bond had been working on the novel for 20 years.  

 

Go on ahead and read Afrekete now. I'm not going to make any specifications for who you might be and what kind of material you might be looking for this time, just read it. It's the most important book I've read this year, and you need to read it as well.

Favorite quotes:

"Dancing with her this time, I felt who I was and where my body was going, and that feeling was more important to me than any lead or follow." (from "Tar Beach" by Audre Lorde, p. 7)

 

"Audre, I am learning not to sacrifice

belief, not to murder hope."

(from "What Has Yet to be Sung" by Malkia Cyril, p. 98)

"I'm used to regretting you now, it's a part of my peace now to wish I had loved you. [...] I love you Natalie, I love you now, I love you as I love the sea and as I love the great maker of the great accident. 'I do love,' said the old lady, the old black lady [...] 'Or at least I want..., at least I try..., at least I walk toward love in the way that I can.'" (from "The Old Lady" by Carolivia Herron, p. 123-24)

 

"The sharp ear of the grandmother catches missed notes, passages played too fast, articulation, passion lost sliding across the keys. The grandmother speaks to her of passion, of the right kind. 'Hastiness, carelessness, will never lead you to any real feeling, or,' she pauses, 'any lasting accomplishment. You have to go deep inside yourself—to the best part.'" (from "Screen Memory" by Michelle Cliff, p. 198)

 

"For Ruby knew many things. She knew the youth of the world that passed each day before her dim window. She knew the innocence of the trees, still naive enough to lace their branches toward the sun. She knew the hope of the path that wound by her door, still red and dusty and calling for firm feet  to track its length. She knew the generosity of the cane fields, the dreams of the stones that lined her worn yard [...] Ruby had felt it then. The audacious hope of rooted things. The innocent anticipation of the shooting stalks, the quivering stillness of the watching trees." (from "Ruby" by Cynthia Bond, p. 236 and 238)

 

 "He laughed quite a bit, Mr. Belle did. He laughed at things that no one else found funny. He laughed at funerals. He laughed at hurricanes and floods. He didn't laugh at the loss or misery, but at the way the hand of nature spun the world about like a woman at a square dance. He laughed at the foolishness of folks who kept getting huffy and indignant at the way they were getting spun." (from "Ruby" by Cynthia Bond, p. 244)

"Then I had to go. I had to get a table and think about the boys and Gabriel and their escapades. I wanted to be left alone to fantasize about the constant, abundant, orgiastic anonymous sex among men; and then to speculate on the sheer exhaustion of sex without love among men. How would it alter the state if women were to carry on that way, away from the 'bad girls' back rooms where so much was staged? Loving a nameless, faceless body full with lust? Instant intimacy without endless pity? Feeding the body the sin it deserves?" (from "Take Care" by Sharee Nash, p. 279)

The J-Drama Drop #34 (Part 2)

Part 1 of this edition of The J-Drama Drop focused on the two dramas I've watched since November, plus an honorable mention "just for me" film. As promised, for part 2 I'm bringing you all the selections I watched from Japanese Film Festival Online 2024, presented by JFF+. (This particular festival was held in June and July, before JFF+ rebranded as JFF Theater and made a new set of films available on August 1st.) Here are the seven films I was most interested in, in the order that I watched them.

ウェディング・ハイ (Wedding High) - 2022

 

A young couple named Haruka and Akihito are currently planning their wedding two years after meeting at work. Akihito (Nakamura Tomoya from 'Nagi no Oitoma') thinks the endless planning decisions and fanfare are unnecessary and cares more about spending his life with Haruka than having a wedding at all, but he feigns enthusiasm to avoid being the stereotypical Japanese husband whose apathy toward the wedding leads to lasting discord within the marriage. With another wedding scheduled to use the banquet hall after this couple, the lead wedding planner (Shinohara Ryouko from 'Silent') strategizes with them, her team, and the attendees scheduled to speak or perform on how to condense all their contributions into one hour. This becomes necessary after certain individuals take up too much time making the wedding reception about themselves. This includes Akihito's boss, a man disgraced at work and at home for cheating on his wife with a sex worker, who spends months studying comedy to prepare a speech that will redeem him; Akihito's TV director friend, who feels artistically stifled in his career and uses the carte blanche he's been given for the wedding video to make the Russian-inspired dramatic film of his dreams; and Haruka's boss, used to being the office clown wherever he goes, who turns his toast into a comedy set so as not to feel upstaged by Akihito's boss.

 

'Wedding High' is a well-paced romp, with multiple detours to explore various characters' motivations. My only criticism is that it could have been 20-30 minutes shorter if it weren't for the extended gag at the end that reveals how Haruka's college ex Yuya (Iwata Takanori from 'Kingyo Tsuma') tries to sabotage the wedding but ends up helping it go off without a hitch instead. (He has convinced himself that Haruka is having an arranged marriage and feels he must crash it to rescue her and steal her back, but keeps missing his chance to interrupt the reception. Toward the end of the film, sooo much time is spent on him chasing down a random petty criminal who has stolen the goshuugi gift money envelopes that guests have brought to the wedding, and it bores more than it pays off.) Sure, Yuya does the right thing by returning the gift money and leaving without making his presence known once he sees how happy Haruka is with Akihito. Sure, it's a relief to see a scorned and self-absorbed ex-boyfriend not follow through on his scumbag intentions. But it all just went on way too long. Maybe that sort of subplot is an aspect of Japanese comedic structure that I'm simply not aware of.

マイ・ブロークン・マリコ (My Broken Mariko) - 2022

 

Based on a manga of the same name. 'My Broken Mariko' opens with a twenty-something named Tomoyo who works an awful sales job (Nagano Mei from 'Unicorn ni Notte') finding out on the news, while eating at a restaurant during her lunch break, that her best friend since childhood has jumped from her apartment window to her death. This friend, the titular Mariko, was physically and sexually abused by her father her whole life, until she moved out on her own and was abused by subsequent boyfriends as well. At a loss for what to do, Tomoyo goes to the apartment Mariko grew up in planning to stab Mariko's father, but after confronting him for daring to mourn the daughter he abused, Tomoyo steals Mariko's ashes and escapes out of a window. She then takes the ashes with her on a spontaneous trip to the (fictional) Marigaoka Cape, due to the place's similarity to Mariko's name and the fact that the pair had always wanted to go to a beach together but never did. After getting robbed upon arrival, Tomoyo meets a mysterious man her age (Kubota Masataka from 'Unnatural') who gives her money to help her get by, and periodically checks on her because he empathizes with her despair. 

 

Obviously I would advise anyone who has experienced abuse, self-harm, or suicidal ideations to approach this film with caution. As someone who has experienced all three, I found 'My Broken Mariko' to be an incredibly honest display of the struggle to find the will to live amidst loss, and amidst the awareness that there's no promise life will get any better. There's hopelessness, and then there's having to take the next step beyond hopelessness, and for Mariko and Tomoyo that step looks significantly different.

メタモルフォーゼの縁側 (Metamorphose no Engawa/BL Metamorphosis) - 2022

Based on a manga of the same name. Two years after the death of her husband, an elderly calligraphy (shodou) instructor named Yuki walks directly from the memorial service to a bookstore, where she finds gay manga (more commonly known as "Boys' Love" or BL manga) where the cookbooks she's looking for used to be. A clerk tells her the section contains "manga", but doesn't specify what genre. So when Yuki haphazardly starts browsing and decides to buy volume 1 of a young adult BL series called "I Only Want to Be Looking at You" ("Kimi no Koto Dake Miteitai"), purely because she thinks the drawings are beautiful, she doesn't realize it's a gay love story until she reaches the end of that volume later on. (Note: This is a real manga series that got its own live-action miniseries adaptation released the same year that 'BL Metamorphosis' was released. Both are directed by Kariyama Shunsuke.) The other clerk, a high school student named Urara who rings Yuki up (played by Ashida Mana), is shocked and confused by Yuki's purchase but doesn't comment on it; she recognizes the series because she herself has a copy among her beloved hidden BL stash at home. Yuki keeps returning to the bookstore to buy successive volumes because, even though she had no idea BL was so popular and she feels too old to be so excited about it, she must keep reading because she wants to support the characters' love. Once she realizes that Urara reads BL too, they bond over being mutual fans, and meet outside of the bookstore (mainly at cafes and Yuki's large house) to talk about "Kimi no Koto Dake Miteitai" and other series that Urara recommends. As Urara expands Yuki's BL knowledge to help distract from her grief and her health concerns, Yuki gives Urara the confidence and resources she needs to create her own original manga.

 

I've known that most readers of BL manga in Japan are women ever since I watched Christiane Amanpour's 'Sex & Love Around the World' docuseries back when it initially was streaming on Netflix years ago. And while I never got into Japanese manga in general (the black and white newspaper comic-eque style never clicked with me), I have been an avid reader of online BL "manhwa" (the Korean, full-color, smutty kind) since around 2019. So the lead characters of 'BL Metamorphosis' being two female readers, albeit with a massive age gap between them, did not surprise me. And their ability to form an intergenerational friendship over such an unexpected common interest is what makes this film so wholesome! I also want to note that while I don't recall watching anything Ashida Mana has appeared in before, I do remember how she used to be EVERYWHERE when she was a child actress in her single digit years, so it's reassuring to see her career still going. (She was 17 going on 18 when this film premiered in 2022.) I always wonder if young actors in her position get burned out, but she doesn't seem to have that problem.

線は、僕を描く (Sen wa, Boku wo Egaku/The Lines That Define Me) - 2022

While volunteering to help set up for a local art event, a passionless law student named Sousuke (my gorgeous gorgeous boy Yokohama Ryuusei from 'Kikazaru Koi'!) is moved to tears by an ink wash painting (suibokuga) that's on display. At lunch, he serendipitously meets a suibokuga master named Kozan, and gets roped into helping set up for Kozan's live painting performance that same day. Sousuke is mesmerized by Kozan's performance, and at the end Kozan invites him to be his apprentice. Sousuke visits Kozan's house a few days later to politely decline becoming his "apprentice", but Kozan won't have it and insists that Sousuke be his "student" instead; he believes Sousuke has potential and wants to teach him how to paint. Sousuke also meets Kozan's granddaughter/apprentice Chiaki, and learns that the painting he was moved to tears by at the beginning of the film was hers. Whereas Chiaki has genius and technical skill, Kozan is more drawn to the emotionality in Sousuke's work (newbie though he might be). So even though Chiaki and gramps live and paint in the same house, in addition to mentoring Sousuke in their own ways, they don't get along with each other due to artistic differences and what she regards as a lack of guidance, acknowledgement, and proper instruction from Kozan. Sousuke isn't sure if he's suited for suibokuga at all, but he keeps practicing because this is the first time he's felt so much as a whiff of passion about anything since his family died in a flood.

 

They somehow made an art film feel like a sports film (especially during the live painting scenes), and I was thoroughly entertained while also learning about the craft of suibokuga at the same time! Besides Yokohama Ryuusei's face and eyelashes, what also endeared me to 'The Lines that Define Me' was its similarity to other films from this festival. Like 'My Broken Mariko', this film features a twenty-something finding out about a loved one's death from the news. But on a brighter note, like 'BL Metamorphosis' this story is partially about bridging the gap between young and old via shared interests, with the old character being a master of a traditional Japanese art form who also lives and works in a huge traditional Japanese house.

そばかす (Freckles/I Am What I Am) - 2022

 

After dropping out of music school because she felt she couldn't hack it, Kasumi (Miura Toko from the 2021 film 'Drive My Car') works at a call center and has moved back to her seaside hometown to live with her family. This relatively laid-back family home includes her depressive dad with whom she's very close, her selectively high-strung mother, and her quiet but frank and delightfully shady grandmother, with frequent visits from her pregnant younger sister and the sister's "nice guy" cheater of a husband. Kasumi's mom can't bear the fact that Kasumi is 30 and doesn't even have a boyfriend, so she tricks Kasumi into attending a formal arranged marriage meeting with a man and his own mother also present. (Kasumi is asexual but has not arrived at this word yet, and nobody seems to believe her when she says she doesn't experience having any sexual or romantic feelings toward anyone.) The two singletons establish an easy friendship once they discover that they both don't care about love or marriage, and that they had met previously at the ramen restaurant the man cooks at. But he later ruins the friendship by falling in love with Kasumi, trying to ambush-kiss her, and then treating her like a freak when she explains her asexuality to him. More people pass in and out of Kasumi's life, as she runs into both a gay former classmate who gets her a job working with him at a daycare, and another former classmate named Maho (Maeda Atusko from the lesbian parenting episode of 'Modern Love Tokyo') who helps Kasumi create an asexual feminist retelling of "Cinderella" for Kasumi's class. (This retelling is done through paper theater or kamishibai, yet another traditional Japanese art form. It seems the JFF+ 2024 selection committee had a theme in mind, which I appreciate if that's the case.) However, after making plans to move in with Kasumi, the rebellious politician's daughter and former porn star that is Maho yields to convention by getting married and moving back to Tokyo, and Kasumi never sees her again. But all is not for naught, as their kamishibai project makes a new co-worker feel secure enough in his own asexuality to sense kinship with Kasumi and attempt to become friends.

 

This film is definitely more about character development than what may or may not be achieved within the plot, and since I've just summarized most of the plot, I don't have much else to say about 'I Am What I Am' except this. Y'all know I've got a soft spot for stories about women in their 20s and 30s floundering in life (see 'Nagisa no Oitoma', 'Gunjou Ryouiki', 'Prism', and 'My Second Aoharu' just to name a few). So this film was right up my alley!

ハケンアニメ (Haken Anime!/Anime Supremacy!) - 2022

 

Based on a light novel of the same name. This is a behind the scenes look at the countless people and skills required to make and promote anime series, specifically two series that are competing for ratings during the same coveted 5pm Saturday timeslot for kid-friendly programming. One series is helmed by Saito, a female newbie director who quit her public servant job to work in the anime industry seven years ago in order to "beat" her biggest inspiration, a similarly young but more experienced and renowned anime director named Oji. Oji's most recent hit anime resonated with Saito's difficult and lonely childhood growing up in public housing, even though she was already an adult when that anime aired. So now as a fellow director, Saito strives to be even better than Oji at reaching children like her. Fittingly, Saito's rival series is helmed by that very same Oji (Nakamura Tomoya from 'Wedding High', see the beginning of this review), a flighty person who often leaves his producer (Ono Machiko from 'Zekkyou') in a lurch trying to cover for his disappearances and stubborn demands. Saito is similarly wrangled and mentored by a producer who, though seemingly callous, is a ride-or-die regarding making her series a success from a production and promotional standpoint, while still aligning the final product as closely with Saito's vision as possible.

 

Anime opening and ending theme songs were my entry point into developing an interest in Japanese media, language, and culture, and although my interest in anime itself waned considerably in college, I was still thrilled by how high-stakes 'Haken Anime' makes everything seem and how much it reveals about the anime industry. It's also amusing to consider that the film seems to cover all parts of the anime production process... except for anime theme songs! Commissioning artists, recording the songs, providing feedback and requesting tweaks to make the song relevant to what the show and its opening or closing sequences are meant to achieve, etc. I was imagining there'd be a montage similar to Higedan's videos showing the making of "No Doubt" and "Pretender" for the 'Confidence Man JP' franchise. But alas. I suppose that process would've been too expensive to depict in 'Haken Anime'; the team behind it would've either had to pay for the rights to use existing music, or pay to create original music to accompany these two separate original anime series that they'd already spent who knows how much on creating solely for the purposes of this film. So I understand.

花束みたいな恋をした (Hanataba Mitai na Koi wo Shita/We Made a Beautiful Bouquet) - 2021

 

Kinu (Arimura Kasumi from 'Call Me Chihiro') and Mugi (Suda Masaki from '3-Nen A-Gumi' are a couple who start dating as 21-year-old college students in 2015, after they both miss the last train from Meidaimae station and proceed to spend the whole night together, mostly eating and walking and talking. During this pivotal night, in addition to numerous other commonalities, they bond over being the only two people who seem to spot and show sufficient awe for Oshii Mamoru (director of the original 1995 'Ghost in the Shell' anime film) at a restaurant, and over still carrying around tickets for the same concert they'd been looking forward to attending earlier that night but missed for their own respective reasons. They go from platonically sleeping at Mugi's place that night, to officially dating, to living together and adopting a cat within less than a year of dating, to witnessing each other's career challenges and personality shifts in the years to come. Despite initially having a peaceful life together where they always make time for each other and their mutual hobbies, they become misaligned as they succumb to parental and cultural pressures to "become normal", i.e. to be contributing members of society via the traditional workforce. This is especially so for Mugi, who forsakes what might've been a robust career as an illustrator for a demanding and conformist job in sales. With the passion and playfulness gradually disintegrating between them, they break up in 2019 after attending a friend's wedding. Most of the film is actually a lengthy flashback preceded by an opening scene set in 2020, when Kinu and Mugi clock each other in the same restaurant while they're each about to pester a younger couple about how they're listening to music wrong (similarly to how a stranger lectured Kinu and Mugi during their early days together). Which demonstrates that, even a year post-breakup when they're already dating other people, the impact of the years they spent together is indelible.

You might be surprised, as I was, to hear some surprisingly profound theories about love being presented in 'We Made a Beautiful Bouquet'. Theories about how the beginning of love is also the beginning of the end of that love, because all things end eventually. About how love has an expiration date because it's something raw, and even though a relationship may be meant to be, that doesn't mean it will last. About how even if a relationship doesn't last, that doesn't make it any less special or beautiful. Speaking of which, please accept the following play-by-play of Kinu and Mugi's break-up scene, because the heartbreak and maturity displayed are too stunning for me to keep to myself. After attending said friend's wedding and going on other mini-outings that same day, Kinu and Mugi find themselves back at the restaurant they used to frequent at the beginning of their relationship. Both want to break up on a high note at the end of a rare good day together, but once they actually start broaching the subject, Kinu's very straightforward about it whereas Mugi desperately and tearfully pleads to hold on. Then Kinu's crying too as she considers his offer to basically settle for each other, and they both sob while silently observing a young couple, sitting in the same booth they used to always sit in, mirroring how they were when first getting to know each other. And then Kinu runs out, Mugi follows her, and they're just standing outside holding each other and crying until they're calm enough to walk home. I kept a completely straight face during that entire scene (something-something depression, something-something emotional numbness), but believe me! If I could've wept the way I wanted to, I would've!

Before naming my favorites from this round, I have to commend what is now known as JFF Theater for putting together such engaging film festival selections this year. This is the most films that I've been interested enough to watch from them, in full, since the first round of JFF+ Independent Cinema (2022-2023)! They did an amazing job curating this year's films, and I am genuinely grateful.

Moving on to favorites, since I only watched two J-dramas this time, it's fairly easy for me to say that 'Eye Love You' wins over 'My Second Aoharu'. It delights my multilingual self, Chae Jong-hyeop makes the whole show flow, and it's simply fresher in my memory than 'My Second Aoharu' is. As for the seven JFF+ films I watched, I've narrowed them down to two favorites. While 'BL Metamorphosis' and 'I Am What I Am' are the most personally relevant to my own experiences, 'Anime Supremacy' is my favorite because I learned the most from it, and 'We Made a Beautiful Bouquet' is my other favorite because it's the one film from the bunch that I'm still feeling and thinking about the most. 

 

Thanks so much for reading both parts of this review! Now I'm off to find more Japanese stuff to watch and write about!

The J-Drama Drop #34 (Part 1)

Not gonna lie, I'm feeling unprecedented levels of weird about my existence and my writing right now, but I've also been itching to write reviews again, so here I am! This round of The J-Drama Drop will be a two-parter, because I went from not having enough material to write about when I started watching one J-drama in November, to finding another J-drama I liked and also watching a bunch of films from Japanese Film Festival Online (JFF+) as 2024 progressed, to just recently finishing that second J-drama in August. (And by recently I mean Monday, as in four days ago.) So part 1 of this review will cover those two J-dramas (both of which are odd couple romantic comedies!), plus an honorable mention film about teen moms. Part 2 of this review will cover the JFF+ films.

 

マイ・セカンド・アオハル (My Second Aoharu/My Second Youth) - TBS, 2023

• 
  As a high school student in her hometown of Shizuoka, Sayako (Hirose Alice from 'Koi Nante, Honki de') initially wasn't interested in college because she figured she couldn't afford it, and because she felt a responsibility as the eldest of four children to help keep the family store afloat. Sayako's teacher helped her realize that she actually wanted to become an architect, but Sayako missed the university entrance exam when she got seriously injured on the way there. Still preferring not to be stuck in Shizuoka after high school graduation, she moved to Tokyo on a whim and worked for 11 years up to the present, just barely making ends meet with various non-permanent roles. But after a string of bad luck upon turning 30 (losing her wallet, her phone, and her office job, plus getting hit by a motorcyclist and seriously injured again while visiting Shizuoka), she's forced to move back in with her parents.
•  Fortunately, the 1,000,000 yen that the motorcyclist gives Sayako as a form of atonement (currently the equivalent of $6,700 USD but used to equal $10,000 USD) is just enough to cover the admission fee and first year of tuition for her university of choice. That money, in addition to an encounter with a surly yet uplifting young stranger sporting a baby face, prompts her to finally pursue her dream of going to college as a 30-year-old freshman. This is her "second youth" that the show title refers to, with aoharu being an alternative and more literal reading of the word seishun (青春) meaning youth. Upon admission, Sayako moves into a sharehouse for architecture undergrads called "Sagrada Familia", where that baby-faced stranger happens to live too. This stranger is Taku (Michieda Shunsuke from 'Haha ni Naru'), a design genius and secret lovechild who resents following in his rich and famous architect father's footsteps.
• After kissing in the sharehouse pool one night, Sayako and Taku agree to treat it like a one-off and act like it never happened so as not to disrupt their rapport as friends, but in the year to follow their feelings for each other only intensify. When Sayako tries to move out (because the sharehouse has a rule about kicking out housemates who date each other), Taku confronts her about it, they admit their feelings, and then they have sex. After the other housemates find out, the no-dating rule is eventually lifted. Nonetheless, Sayako and Taku reluctantly break up later when Taku receives a job offer in Switzerland; she doesn't want to be his excuse to miss out on this opportunity, and he doesn't want to keep her waiting on him when she could be progressing in her own career and starting a family with someone else. As the next two years pass, will Sayako and Taku get back together? And more importantly, despite being perceived as too old and unskilled for her dreams, will Sayako be able to establish herself as a professional architect like she's always wanted?
  

Meh: Full disclosure, it's literally been six months since I finished this series, so my notes and my memory may not be serving me well in this moment. But I honestly can't think of anything I genuinely dislike about this show. It's chill. It's cute but also grown. It taught me a few things about the field of architecture. No real complaints.

Better: I appreciate how 'My Second Aoharu' conveys the idea that architecture can comprise many different kinds of projects, from utilitarian and commonplace to artful and innovative, and that there's a difference between being able to design something new from scratch versus being able to renovate or revitalize something while still respecting its original use, structure, and integrity. Sayako gradually discovers that while she kinda sucks at designing from scratch, she thrives at improving upon what's already been built, which helps guide her toward what she wants to specialize in career-wise.

 

Speaking of Sayako, while I could imagine some viewers criticizing Hirose Alice's performance as "cringe" or too much, I was endlessly amused by her her ability to play such an awkward character and be unafraid of making ridiculous motions or facial expressions to achieve that. Plus switching so abruptly between that and acting normal, between light and serious, between inspired and devastated. Her range of expression is wide, believable, and well-timed.

 

I also couldn't help but notice that, similar to 'Unicorn ni Notte', this show tries to throw in some progressive representation here and there. There's an outspoken marginally plus size housemate (played by Yumena Yanai whom I follow on Instagram!) who wears a different wig every day, perhaps even in every scene she's in, and she's fabulous! I laughed at the randomness of her wig colors and styles, but the size of her body was never made to be a joke, and that was a relief. There's another housemate who's revealed to be gay (or at least somewhere on the queer spectrum) when he explains to Sayako that he initially had to move out of his parents' house because they would antagonize him for wearing makeup and even threw his makeup collection away.

 

Best: Thank GOODNESS that this older woman/younger man age gap relationship isn't as unsettling as the one portrayed in 'Shijuu kara'! I can appreciate a J-drama being a little different, taking some swings, and in hindsight I'm pretty sure that that show was trying to make viewers uncomfortable on purpose. I can appreciate weirdness that's intentional! But despite being a legal adult, the baby-faced young man in 'Shijuu kara' looked too much like an actual child for me to not be a little scarred for life from watching that show (no shade to Itagaki Rihito's performance, I'm sure he was doing his best). Conversely, Michieda Shunsuke as Taku reads much less like "child" and more like "moody but mature twenty-something who happens to have boyish charm", which makes a world of difference.

Eye Love You - TBS/Netflix, 2024

• 
  Twelve years ago, when Yuri went sea otter watching with her dad and almost drowned trying to save the otters from an oil leak, she came away from the accident with the ability to hear people's thoughts (心の声, kokoro no koe, "the voice of their hearts") when she makes eye contact with them. Hence the show's title, 'Eye Love You'. This becomes the only way she can communicate with her father (who had a stroke after saving her from drowning), because the injuries he sustained have left him alert but immobile in a hospital bed, with a permanent tracheotomy and an inability to speak.
• Today, Yuri is the CEO of an eco-friendly company called Dolce & Chocolat which sells chocolate and coffee produced from recycled cacao husks. Her gift of telepathy is advantageous for anticipating customers' needs (making her business successful so she can afford her father's long-term care), but she is still notoriously reluctant to open up to people and has been unlucky in love. She founded this company with her no-nonsense best friend from college, Hanaoka, who is secretly in love with her, but in this series Yuri's love interest is actually a Korean wildlife conservation grad student named Tae-o (Chae Jong-hyeop). Tae-o is also a part-time food delivery person, and Yuri repeatedly encounters him when he delivers Korean food to her apartment. Like Yuri, he's also a foodie and a sea otter obsessive, and his expertise in environmental issues leads him to work at Dolce & Chocolat post-graduation. (Tae-o is initially recruited by Hanaoka without Yuri's knowledge, because Hanaoka handles hiring.) Yuri tries to keep things professional but Tae-o has already declared his feelings for her and is determined to woo her, so they eventually find a way to date discretely.
  
• Yuri can hear Tae-o's thoughts but not understand them because she only speaks Japanese, meanwhile Tae-o speaks Korean, Japanese, and English. But rather than linguistic or cultural differences, what really threatens to tear them apart is the controversy surrounding Yuri's gift. Yuri is still scarred by the shame and rejection she faced in high school when she told her first and only boyfriend about her gift, and she'd rather find a way to relinquish her gift (and painfully risk never communicating with her father again) than jeopardize her relationship with Tae-o by telling him her truth. As for Tae-o, he receives repeated warnings about Yuri from two former neighbors from his childhood in Seoul: his grad school mentor and father figure (a professor who moved Tae-o to Japan with him when Tae-o's mother died), and a Korean Dolce & Chocolat investor who has the same gift as Yuri. This investor lady, named Ha Na, previously published a picture book about how people with their gift are cursed to be alone forever, because whoever they fall in love with will die. Believing this folklore to be true, the professor and Ha Na pressure Tae-o to break up with Yuri. Can these cross-cultural lovers find a way to stay together without Tae-o risking death or Yuri losing what makes her special?
  

Meh:  *Spoiler alert!* I was wondering how the show was going to resolve this dilemma, and while the resolution does allow Yuri and Tae-o to continue their relationship as they are, it also makes the entire dilemma seem like an overinflated waste of time. Because the whole thing about Yuri being cursed and Tae-o being in danger isn't even true! This "conflict" really just amounts to Ha Na projecting her grief onto everyone else (via the picture book and her direct attempts to intervene between Yuri and Tae-o), because she blamed herself for her college boyfriend's sudden death. All this, instead of asking his family or checking his medical records herself to see that he died from coronary artery disease! How is Hanaoka, a Japanese man who has only a business relationship with Ha Na and presumably no access to the Korean healthcare system, the one to explain this to her at the end of the series? It makes no sense to me.

 

Better: Such a strong first episode! If nothing else, Tae-o may be silly but he's also DIRECT, so by the end of episode 1 he's already decided he likes Yuri romantically and is asking her if she likes him too. And then for the show to turn around and reveal him to be the new intern at Yuri's company at the very last minute of that episode? Setting the stakes early and clearly. Bravo!

 

And how adorable are the handwritten notes that Yuri (as a customer) and Tae-o (as a delivery person) leave for each other outside Yuri's door? Tae-o even draws little cartoonish sea otters on the ones he leaves for her! The notes start with him recommending Korean restaurants and dishes that are better than what she's initially ordering, then progress to more. This mode of communication was especially endearing to me because I started watching 'Eye Love You' in the midst of finishing a romance novel called The Neighbor Favor, where a couple literally falls in love via email, before falling in love again in person as neighbors.

 

On a separate but related note, I respect how mature Hanaoka is about accepting that he's not the one for Yuri. He clocks that Yuri and Tae-o have something going on by episode 4, and after getting over whatever initial jealousy he feels, he's surprisingly supportive. Yuri doesn't even learn of his feelings for her until she reads his mind while he's in the middle of encouraging her to date Tae-o. (They're alone in her office, and Hanaoka points out that Dolce & Chocolat doesn't have a non-fraternization policy, subtly acknowledging that nearly everyone in the office knows that Yuri and Tae-o fancy each other and that it's fine if she wants to date Tae-o. At the same time, she hears him mentally trying to convince himself that he's okay with letting her go despite having always loved her.) Then in episode 6, at the end of a Hokkaido business trip when Hanaoka and Yuri are about to leave for Tokyo ahead of Tae-o (because Tae-o has distanced himself from Yuri, who's not ready to admit that she wants him as much as he wants her), Hanaoka is the one urging Yuri to stay and mend things with Tae-o before returning to Tokyo. As a manager it's his job to properly assess situations, and even when it comes to his unrequited love, Hanaoka is secure enough to accept the reality that Yuri will not love him back, and gracefully step aside so she can be happy with someone else. It takes so much self-awareness to quietly bow out like that, and even though he might remain in love with Yuri for a long time, he knows that's his own problem to deal with.

 

Best: Chae Jong-hyeop. Without a doubt. He not only has to act in two languages (mostly Japanese) in addition to his native Korean, but he has to make his charisma shine through in every single scene, no matter what language he's speaking. And he nails it! I started watching 'Eye Love You' for its premise alone, but I stuck around for Chae Jong-hyeop. My introduction to him (and my only other frame of reference for his acting) was the 2023 K-drama 'Castaway Diva', where he played a guarded but caring TV producer living under a false name after escaping from his abusive father. His performance in that was wonderful, but for his sake I was relieved to see him play a more carefree love interest this time.

 

I can only speak for myself, but this show must be a DREAM for linguists and other multilingual people like me! There's so much meat to intellectually chew on here! So much bilingual Japanese-Korean conversation happening, so many translation tools and methods being used! The fact that Yuri can't understand Tae-o's thoughts because he supposedly only thinks in Korean is such an interesting choice to make narratively because... does Tae-o not think out what he's going to say in Japanese before or as he speaks to her? I know it's not just me who does that when I'm speaking my other languages. Perhaps allowing Tae-o to think in multiple languages would complicate the show's premise too much and I'm overthinking this aspect of it, but it's still fascinating to consider what assertion or assumption the show might be making about people's (in)ability to think in more than one language. That assertion/assumption feels false to me, but it's still fun to think about. Speaking of Tae-o, even the subtitles provided for his character are intentional! I watched this show on Netflix, and for both the English and Japanese versions with subtitles (I checked), the show is selective with what Korean dialogue or voiceover is translated and what isn't. Most of Tae-o's thoughts go transcribed and untranslated, so just like Yuri viewers are left to guess the meaning based on the context of the scenes, or based on whatever Korean comprehension they may have (of which I only have a smattering from 15 years of watching K-dramas).

And I'm sure 'Eye Love You' is a treat for folklorists too, because the show lays out some intriguing (even if slightly underdeveloped) threads about how myths are made/created/passed on, while linking ancient Ainu legends in Hokkaido with Ha Na's book in Seoul and Yuri's own experience in Tokyo.

Lastly, I was so touched by the show's use of coffee and chocolate as metaphors for our ability to respond to life by making situations bitter or sweet, depending on the choices we make and the perspectives we take. This is something that Yuri's dad (who used to be a chef) taught her as a child when he would serve her coffee and chocolate together at his restaurant, and in adulthood it remains a guiding principle that Yuri references in her personal life and her business. (Coffee and chocolate come from different plants, but cacao can still be used to make both, which Yuri's company does.)

Honorable Mention: 朝が来る (Asa ga Kuru/Morning Comes/True Mothers) - 2020

 

I watched this film on Kanopy on a whim back in March, and didn't take any notes because this was going to be one of those "just for me" watches. But after watching so many Japanese films through JFF+ that I plan to tackle in part 2 of this review, I feel it necessary not to leave this one out. In 'True Mothers', the Kuriharas are a couple who dealt with fertility issues before adopting a newborn son named Asato, and who are dealing with Asato's alleged behavioral issues at school now, when they're suddenly called and then visited by a disheveled young woman claiming to be the little boy's birth mother Hikari. At first she claims to want her son back, and then threatens to expose the fact that Asato isn't their biological son if they don't give her money. The Kuriaharas stand firm, and don't believe that she is who she says.

 

I needed to include 'True Mothers' in this review because I am still enthralled by how director Naomi Kawase plays with perspective! You think the film is going to be about this couple handling the unfair nuisance and intrusion of this young woman. But then most of the film turns out to be a flashback of Hikari's life: how she was impregnated by her very first boyfriend at 14, how her reputation-obsessed family quietly shuffled her away to a temporary home for expecting and ill-equipped teen moms in Hiroshima, how she struggled to survive on her own in Tokyo after having Asato and dropping out of school and escaping her family for good, and what led her to reach out to the Kuriharas now. This switcheroo reminds me so much of Kiana Davenport's novel Song of the Exile, which uses an international wartime romance as a cover for a more excruciating and confrontational story about "comfort women" being victimized by imperial Japanese forces during World War II, and the ongoing colonization of Hawaii as U.S. statehood loomed. I also felt similarly okey-doked (in the best way) by Bernice McFadden's novel Nowhere Is a Place, where an estranged mother-daughter road trip story transitions into a detailed history of the impact slavery and assault have had on generations of women in their family. But I digress. My point is that, of course the Kuriharas don't recognize Hikari as the quiet, polite, innocent-looking girl they met when they first adopted Asato, because life has been beating Hikari's behind ever since then! Her approaching them might be impulsive and self-centered, but she's still in desperate need of their compassion.

I've still got a bunch of other films to talk about! Check out part 2 of this review here!

BOOKS! (Just for the Cameras + The School for Good Mothers)

(Happy New Year, I guess? February is almost over, my grandpa is still dead, and nothing makes sense, but sure, Happy New Year to you and yours. This is my first post of 2024, after all.)

One of my goals for 2024 has been to get back to reading two books a month and writing one book review a month like I used to do, and sure I've already missed January, but a girl can still keep hope alive, can she not? So here I am reviewing the first book I purchased in 2023, and the first book I've finished in 2024. That's my only rationale for pairing them together. First up, a softhearted raunchfest of a romance novel about three queer British Nigerian roommates in Manchester (comprised of a sex worker couple and their best friend), who eventually become a polyamorous unit after filming videos together. And then, an emotionally torturous but necessary debut novel with flecks of dark humor, about a Chinese American mom in Philadelphia who's forced into a new tech and surveillance-obsessed parenting program for a year, after unintentionally leaving her toddler at home alone for two hours. 

Just for the Cameras by Viano Oniomoh

 

When I wrote my review for Sweet Vengeance, Just for the Cameras was her newest release. I declared back then that I'd be reading Viano Oniomoh's next book as soon as I could get my hands on it, and was I lying? I surely was not! I ordered this novel in October and started reading it in November, but we all know how November turned out for me. So I ended up finishing this romance novel  in January.

The romantic leads of Just for the Cameras are three British Nigerian twenty-somethings in Manchester, England. Luka (a demisexual biromantic photographer) has been friends and roommates with Kian (a bisexual interior designer and sex worker) and Jordanne (also a bisexual sex worker) for years, and their supportive presence was instrumental in helping Luka recover from being left at the altar by his ex-fiancée Dolores. (Which was unintentionally hilarious to me because the name Dolores literally means "pain" or "sorrow." Like, you know... might've predicted that one. But I digress.)  While Luka isn't necessarily heartbroken anymore, being jilted in such an abrupt way, in addition to a lifetime of emotional manipulation and neglect by his parents, have only worsened his fear of abandonment and the sense that he is undeserving of love.

 

What Luka doesn't know is that Jordanne and Kian—who are in a committed relationship and generate most of their income from making sexual content together—have secretly been in love with him for ages, but they keep their affections for him confined to the realm of fantasy. When they have sex they fantasize about Luka being in the room, at first unaware, but then noticing them, watching them, responding to them, joining them, ordering them around...  But of course they would never actually put their friend in that situation. Luka respects what they do, and they respect him by cleaning up after themselves when they use common areas of the apartment to record, but Luka has never seen any of their videos, much less expressed any interested in getting involved with them on or off camera. Until Luka comes home early one day, walks in on Jordanne and Kian having sex on the living room sofa, and aroused curiosity wins out over embarrassment for all three of them. So much so, that after the couple mentions wanting to shoot some voyeurism scenes to reinvigorate their content, Luka shocks them by volunteering to play their voyeur and see how it goes. 

 

The trio agrees to collaborate on just one video, but wind up shooting three, each beginning with Jordanne and Kian trying to discretely do the do under a blanket or bed covers when Luka enters the scene. With each video Luka becomes a progressively more active and authoritative participant, and by the end of the third filming they're all tangled in bed together. The videos are a massive hit with Jordanne and Kian's subscribers, and the roommates' desires for each other have been set ablaze, but every moment of increased intimacy between the trio (on and off camera) is followed by Luka getting shy and distancing himself from the other two. Despite how desperately he yearns to be closer to them, he can't allow himself to believe that his best friends' interest in him ventures beyond no-strings physical interactions. Even after the couple eventually invites him to join their relationship, which Luka immediately accepts, his impulse to run away remains strong. All the while, as Luka agonizes over whether Jordanne and Kian truly want to be with him or not, Kian and Jordanne agonize over scaring him away by coming on too strong. Can this trio of overthinking and overly considerate individuals turn "just one more time" into something that lasts?

As someone who also needs an inordinate amount of reassurance but usually resists asking for it, I connected with Luka as a character right away. What also endeared me to him was his burgeoning ability to allow himself to want things for simple reasons that don't need expounding or interrogation. He's risk-averse and constantly catastrophizing, but he also sports rose tattoo sleeves that he had done simply because he likes pretty things. He's a demisexual babe who's been detached from feeling desire or arousal since his break-up, and he's terrified of being rejected by his roommates, but he also chooses to do porn with them simply because he wants to. (And because they're hot! Props to Viano Oniomoh for writing a romance novel about Black people who are unambiguously big and also hot! Jordanne is fat. Kian is fat. Luka is thick-bodied with abs. They all find each other endlessly sexy. Bravo!) My review thus far has focused mostly on Luka, but Just for the Cameras provides some meaty backstory for Jordanne and Kian as well. Jordanne was disowned by her parents when an ex-boyfriend outed her for doing sex work, and she stumbled through learning to trust and rely on people when she started dating Kian, so they both have an abundance of patience for Luka's fear-induced flightiness. They never tire of having to keep reassuring him that their affection for him is real and true, that they want him to feel safe and secure with them, and I found such tirelessness remarkable. 

 

I was also impressed by the pride that Jordanne and Kian take in their work. Having sex on camera for money is both not a big deal (nothing to be ashamed of), and also an integral form of expression for them. They do porn because they genuinely enjoy it, and because it pays! They have control over how their content is made and distributed, and they earn more than enough from their videos to sustain themselves—even enough for Kian to quit his job at an architectural firm, which he later does because he hates that job. Plus, getting featured as the cover story of a Black erotic magazine helps Jordanne reaffirm how integral sex work is to her purpose of destigmatizing Black women's desires. And this destigmatization is evident within their community too. Most of their close friends are also Black queer sex workers. By the end of the novel, Jordanne and Kian have each spoken clearly to their respective (very traditional, very Nigerian) parents about their commitment to doing sex work full time, and all of the parents respect Jordanne and Kian's choices with astonishingly little judgment. (Except for Jordanne's dad, who's a lost cause.) And while Luka is reluctant to claim the title of "sex worker" by the end of the novel, he's still continuing to film videos with is boyfriend and girlfriend and get paid from them too, since Jordanne and Kian always insisted that he receive his cut, even from the very first video they collaborated on.

Just for the Cameras can feel only the slightest bit long, but I actually commend that Oniomoh takes her time laying the foundation for exactly how and why Luka becomes comfortable with joining Jordanne and Kian's relationship, and how their polyamorous arrangement morphs into a new relationship all its own. Rebekah Weatherspoon's Harbor is the only other romance novel about Black polyamorous people that I have to compare JFTC with, and there are some notable differences. First, where Harbor has a woman joining a relationship between two men, JFTC has a man joining a relationship between a man and a woman. That progression happens more quickly and with comparatively less emotional back-and-forth in Harbor; since that trio's main priority at the outset is having their kinky needs met, there's more hashing out terms and consent than reflecting endlessly on feelings. Whereas in JFTC, while the trio is also somewhat kinky, their main priority is doing everything possible to not jeopardize their pre-established friendship. Also, while in both novels a casual sexual arrangement transforms into a fully-committed union by the end of the story, in JFTC it's clear that despite attempts at denial, each member of the trio yearns for a deeply romantic three-person relationship with each other from the beginning. If someone were wondering which book to try first to learn about polyamory, I suppose it would depend on what that someone is looking for. Harbor focuses more on recovering from grief and is more informative about BDSM rules and expectations, while Just for the Cameras is more sentimental in a mushy kind of way and gives a behind-the-scenes perspective on how porn creators live.

 

Looking at Oniomoh's work alone, between the two novels of hers that I've read so far, Just for the Cameras comes in second for me. Sweet Vengeance is more tightly written, plus it'll always have that indirect "Demon 79" ('Black Mirror') connection in its favor because of how I discovered it. But make no mistake, Just for the Cameras is way too lovely to pass up, especially for readers who can handle the raunch that it's serving. And as usual, Oniomoh wrote, self-published, illustrated the cover, and designed the pages for this book herself. If you're interested in Black romance novels, examples of Black polyamory, exceedingly explicit sex scenes, healing from shame and trauma, the (independent) sex industry, Black people in Britain, or adult children asserting agency in their relationships with their parents, then read this book!

Favorite quotes:

"Stretch marks decorated their bellies, thighs and hips like pretty, pale firebolts zigzagging against their dark skin" (58).

 

"It overwhelmed her, the thought of it—Luka dating them. Both of them. All of them dating each other. It made her feel like she couldn't breathe, like she was flying so high in the sky she'd met the vastness of space; limited and infinite at the same time... When she'd first realised she loved Kian, she'd never thought she'd love anyone else the way she loved him. Down to her soul, she'd thought, this is it. This is the love everyone's been talking about. I finally get it. I finally understand.

 

Now, here she was, doubled up on the very love people had sworn to her happened only once in a lifetime" (107-108).

 

"It's natural, considering everything you've been through, to want to ruin something good when you finally have it... But your anxiety and your trauma are lying to you. They're telling you this good thing is surely too good to be true, that you should probably save yourself before you get hurt, using your previous history as apparent proof. But most times, oftentimes, they're just flat-out wrong... Sometimes, a good thing is simply a good thing" (255).

 

"I know this is going to be difficult, but here's an assignment. For this weekend, and this weekend only, I want you to let yourself have this. Every gesture, every kiss, every intimate moment—put all of yourself into it. Give yourself permission to be happy, for just this one weekend. Pretend you're in a time capsule, if you must, and nothing of the past or the future matters. Just you, in precious moments with your partners. Can you do that for me?" (255).

The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan

 

I can't remember how this novel got on my radar, but it was on my book list for a while, and then I happened to spot it at Costco in early 2023. Now mind you, Costco used to have an unexpectedly robust book section. I found Giovanni's Room, my first James Baldwin novel (and perhaps his gayest one) at Costco. I found Pachinko at Costco. But at some point, probably around the election of 45, the book section got whittled down to "stuff Republicans would read" (how I joke about it with my mom now). So although my copy of this book was printed with a permanent sticker endorsement from a certain Republican president's daughter turned news correspondent on the front cover, I was pleasantly surprised to find The School for Good Mothers at Costco that day. Who let something so progressive, so transgressive, slip onto the display? To whomever was or wasn't doing their job and allowed that to happen, I am thankful. 

 

At the beginning of this novel, depressed 39-year-old Frida Liu is divorced, a single mother, and living in Philadelphia, despite never expecting to be any of those things. Originally raised by Chinese professor parents in the Chicago area, she gave up her career and social life in New York City to move to Philly because her (white) husband Gust wanted to, only for him to begin an affair with a (younger, richer, also white) woman named Susanna while Frida was pregnant with her and Gust's first child. Gust fully left Frida for Susanna when said child (named Harriet) was still a newborn. Which is to say that in the 18 months that Harriet has been alive, Frida has had adapt to an incredibly difficult reality—renting a house for just herself and Harriet, splitting custody with her ex-husband, receiving a paltry $500 per month in child support, and writing full-time for an old and unaccommodating Wharton business professor. One early September day, after a string of consecutively stressful and sleepless nights trying to meet an article deadline while tending to Harriet's non-stop crying due to an ear infection, Frida is desperate for air. So leaves she places Harriet in an ExerSaucer so she can quickly go get coffee and retrieve some notes from her office. But this excursion unintentionally lasts two and a half hours, which is long enough for a neighbor to call the police, for police to seize Harriet and place her in Gust (and Susanna's) custody after interrogating Frida, and for a cold-blooded social worker to further chastise Frida before informing her that it'll take at least 60 days for a decision to be made about her revised custody rights (or lack thereof). All this because of one "very bad day," as Frida will frequently refer to it.

And unfortunately for Frida, timing is not on her side. After the deaths of two children under their watch, Child Protective Services is now trying to cover its own behind by implementing new, extreme, yet mysterious policy changes. These changes put an even crueler onus on parents (especially mothers) to prove that they don't deserve to be criminalized and permanently stripped of their parental rights, even for relatively minor missteps. It's like in the 80s when the US started militarizing the police force with war-standard gear and guns and tanks, except CPS is being militarized with technology. Frida submits to 10 weeks of violently invasive surveillance (cameras in her home, phone activity monitored), severely limited visits with Harriet that are supervised by the aforementioned hostile social worker, and interviews with a court-appointed psychologist. But this merely enables the cops, the CPS surveillance people, the social worker, and the psychologist to each use their findings against Frida, framing and interpreting her every behavior in the most unforgiving ways, in order to paint her as an irredeemably unfit mother. Based on these findings, the family court judge gives Frida the "choice" of attending a new year-long "rehabilitation" program that bad moms are currently being funneled into. If she succeeds at improving as a mother, she just might get her daughter back. (This is the titular School for Good Mothers, but in the book it has no specified name. I'll refer to it as TSFGM anyway.) Philly is hosting the pilot of this program, which will later expand nationwide. And since it begins in November, Frida and her hundreds of peers will miss Thanksgiving with their children along with all other holidays, birthdays, and milestones to come for the next year.

The school is a former liberal arts college campus turned quasi-prison. Frida and her peers are repeatedly told they're not in prison, but in some ways it's the same or even worse. They all must wear the same uniform, and can't receive care packages or letters. They're each limited to one 10-minute video call with their children per week. The campus is surrounded by an electrified fence. And they have the constant threat of the termination of their parental rights held over their heads. If they don't convince the state that they've sufficiently unbecome themselves and improved their parenting by the end of the program? Termination. If they get expelled from the program? Termination. Quit the program? Termination. Possess or use drugs or alcohol during the program? Termination. If they ever tell anyone anything about the program, even long after they've completed it, even if their full parental rights have been restored? Termination, and a spot on the Negligent Parent Registry, which has the same tracking and consequences as the sex offender registry but specifically for bad parents. (The moms are even required to sign NDAs, so as arrogant as the powers that be are about this supposedly groundbreaking program, those powers are serious about preventing any details about it from getting out to the public.)  Frida and her fellow moms are basically in a state-mandated hostage situation. 

 

Aside from her roommates, Frida spends most of her time in class with four other inmates mothers who have toddler daughters just like she does. The two instructors assigned to retool and evaluate this class's mothering neither have children themselves, nor offer any credentials that would attest to expertise in childhood development, child and maternal health, or parenting. The main fixture of these classes are "dolls" (or "demon robot doll children", as I often referred to them in my notes) that have been manufactured to be as lifelike as robotics and artificial intelligence will allow. These dolls are the main tool with which the moms' mothering skills are measured, and they're designed to, however vaguely, resemble every mom's real child in both age and appearance. With cameras in their eyeballs, the dolls also serve as an additional layer of surveillance on top of all the other forms of monitoring that the moms are subjected to. Frida names her Eurasian robot toddler Emmanuelle. 

 

The school operates on the notion that there's only one way to be a good mom, and despite incorporating such advanced technology, the standards for womanhood and motherhood that the school insists upon are stuck in the 1950s to an absurd degree. I recently watched 'Fellow Travelers' (a 2023 miniseries about closeted gay men working on Capitol Hill during the Red and Lavender Scares), so that era was fresh in my mind as I finished The School for Good Mothers. And I remember telling my therapist how I usually avoid thinking about the 1950s because it seems like after the Great Depression and WW2, (white) America was desperate to reaffirm itself, so the most stringent ideals for true Americanness and moral superiority reigned supreme. Which only fostered more suffering. TSFGM is no different in its capacity to foster suffering, to require it in order for the moms to redeem themselves, and yet insist that making them suffer is not the point. I'll let you discover the inane, reductive curriculum and all its subsequent horrors for yourself, since I'm sure Jessamine Chan put a lot into laying them out the way she did. But consider the following as indicators. 

 

The first mom to quit is Helen, a 50-something white woman and Frida's initial roommate, who quits on the second day after being freaked out by the demon robot dolls; she's genuinely frightened by the six-foot doll she's assigned as a stand-in for her teenage son. The first mom to be expelled is Lucretia, a Black schoolteacher, one of Frida's classmates, and Frida's first friend at the school. In addition to already being required to reimburse the school for her doll "dying" from water damage after insisting on playing in the snow (a debt Lucretia absolutely cannot afford), Lucretia gets expelled for defending herself when her high school rival Linda (another classmate of hers and Frida's) picks a fight with her. The first mom to die by suicide is Margaret, a young Latina woman who is part of the first lesbian couple to get caught by staff during a boom of clandestine lesbian activity on campus. (Moms are people, people get lonely, loneliness sometimes begets horniness, especially in such close quarters.) The first moms to escape are Roxanne, a 20-something Black college student who replaces Helen as Frida's roommate, and Meryl, a white teen mom and classmate of Frida's whom Roxanne has a crush on despite Meryl having an appetite for Black men (including her baby's father back home, one of the guards, and one of the guys from the school for good fathers). Notably, rather than having her parental rights terminated when she gets caught, Meryl is still allowed to return and finish the program after a week-long solitary confinement in a dark basement room. Her whiteness seems to be the only explanation for such leniency. (As the only Asian mom at TSFGM, Frida repeatedly observes how the school treats Black and Brown moms with more suspicion and more punitive measures than any of the other moms, including herself.)

As I just alluded to, there is a school for good fathers not too far away, but the two groups of detainees only interact on each other's respective campuses for co-ed training during the last five months of the program. Not surprisingly, three times more women have been institutionalized as "bad mothers" than men as "bad fathers", since patriarchy (especially 1950s-style patriarchy) weighs the pressure of being a good parent and therefore a good person more heavily against women. And of course, good father school has fewer rules, allows more privileges—a full hour to speak to their children once a week, for instance, compared to the moms' 10 minutes—and revolves around the idea that it's important for them to stay in their children's lives. Meanwhile, the mothers are constantly made to internalize the idea that they're a danger to their children, that their children would probably be better off not interacting with them, that they might not be suited to be parents at all. Frida herself has her call privileges revoked twice as punishment for not performing well enough on evaluations; she isn't allowed to speak to her daughter for months at a time because her counselor keeps moving the goalposts for what she must do to earn those privileges back.

So obviously The School for Good Mothers is giving The Handmaid's Tale, especially with the reduction of women to their mothering capabilities and the color-coding of social role by uniform. (Moms wear blue jumpsuits, instructors and other female staff wear pink lab coats, male guards wear... whatever they wear.) It's also giving demented summer camp, especially when the mom and dad schools are made to socialize during the summer and some of the fall; there's an introductory picnic and an end-of-summer dance, both pacification tactics that feel infantilizing and just plain weird. TSFGM is also giving results-obsessed corporate culture, with privileges being dangled in moms' faces while rules are changed and benchmarks are pushed farther and higher. It's giving cult, especially with all the self-flagellating mantras that the moms are prompted to repeat. The main one is, "I am a bad mother, but I am learning to be good," but there are also countless other situationally-dependent mantras that follow the same structure, "I am a bad mother for/because [insert supposed infraction here]." It's giving high school health class fake baby assignment, taken to the extreme, with data treated like gospel. And it's been years since I've read or watched Girl, Interrupted and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, but the circumstantial solidarity, rivalry, and rebellion that the moms exhibit in TSFGM reminded me of those stories as well. All of this to say that while Chan has created something scarily original with this novel, it's also in good company with previous works that examine or predict the ruinous consequences of institutionalizing people on such a massive and cruel scale.

There's so much more I wanted to touch on, especially how Frida's self-esteem (which she admits is influenced by growing up in predominantly white spaces) intersects with her romantic history and sexual desires, but I'll close with this instead. With its similarities to The Handmaid's Tale, I'd hoped that The School for Good Mothers would have a similarly hopeful ending. (Margaret Atwood's Offred is supposedly whisked off to freedom by the resistance, and the Christofascist regime she's been living under is later studied as an era of the past, no longer in power.) For Frida, I was desperately hoping along with her that she would have her parental rights restored and be reunited with Harriet for good. To her credit, Frida does complete the program, but... let's just say that hope and this novel's ending are in two separate "galaxies." While I can't say I'm in a rush to re-read The School for Good Mothers anytime soon—my heart needs a break, and I can't be feeling despondent and enraged like this all the time!—I can say that I'd recommend this novel to anyone. It reads like a movie, it reads like something that should be taught in high school and university classrooms, and Chan has readers living every minute right alongside Frida in a way that makes her loneliness and suffering feel like our lot as well. And an extra little tidbit I couldn't help but notice: Crystal Hana Kim (author of another splendid Costco find titled If You Leave Me) is included in Chan's "Acknowledgments" section. If you care about women and children in a sincere and non-paternalistic way, are wary of tech and government getting even more in bed with each other to encroach upon your life, want a The Handmaid's Tale-esque story that's modern and focuses more on women of color, have any interest in or connection to Philadelphia, or simply want more literature written by Asian American women in your life, then read this book! 

Favorite quotes:

"On her bad day, she needed to get out of the house of her mind, trapped in the house of her body, trapped in the house where Harriet sat in her ExerSaucer with a dish of animal crackers. Gust used to explain the whole world that way: the mind as a house living in the house of the body, living in the house of a house, living in the larger house of the town, in the larger house of the state, in the houses of America and society and the universe. He said these houses fit inside one another like the Russian nesting dolls they bought for Harriet... she felt a sudden pleasure when she shut the door and got in the car that took her away from her mind and body and house and child... The pleasure of the drive propelled her. It wasn't the pleasure of sex or love or sunsets, but the pleasure of forgetting her body, her life" (13-14).

"If she ever tells Harriet about this place, she'll say that she had to store her devotion somewhere. Emmanuelle, a vessel for her hope and longing, the way people used to invest tablets and sacred trees with their faith and love" (184).

"When they reach the tree line, they begin howling. They're beginning to understand. Beginning to mourn. They sound like Lucretia on the day of her snow-angel disaster. Like the dolls on the day they were hit. The only word Frida can make out is no. She waits and listens then decides to join them... Many mothers screamed until they lost their voices. They held each other. Some knelt. Some prayed. Some bit their hands... A body could produce pure fear. Pure sound. Sound that eclipsed thought. Meryl screamed louder still.... felt something life from her as she howled, as if she were jumping out of her own skin" (291-92).