Because I am a huge fan of making lists, I definitely drew up a long list of things to do this break knowing fully well that I’ll only accomplish a fraction of it. At the top of the list were to become a little more cultured by doing more leisurely reading and watching classic films. What does this have to do with dragons and catfish? Ok, I’ll cut to the chase.
DRAGONS.
So my little sister convinced me to watch her entire box set of Bette Davis movies that she got for Christmas. While I reallyyyy recommend watching “Now, Voyager,” I can’t quite say the same for “The Letter.” Watching “The Letter,” I died a little inside for the following reasons.
1) It’s set in Singapore but the only Asians are plantation workers and murderers
2) The antagonist is a stereotypical Chinese dragon lady (get this) played by a white woman (it’s hilarious when she attempts to speak Malay though)
3) Lines such as when the American waiter says to the plantation owner: “It’s such a shame that sugar doesn’t grow in civilized regions.”
4) The Asian man with the most lines is a greedy, immoral, obsequious, and effeminate secretary
As you’ve guessed, my verdict for this thriller is that it’s not only racist but it just sucks overall.
CATFISH.
To start off my reading list, I picked up this memoir by Andrew X. Pham called Catfish and Mandala. It is fucking good. (This is coming from a girl who hardly swears). It’s artistic, maybe a little self-deprecating at times, but very honest. It’s a travelogue of his adventures throughout Mexico, the US, Japan, and Korea– on a bike. As in bicycle, not motorbike. Pham bikes 4,000 miles on a search to find his roots and cope with the death of a family member. Interspersed in his accounts are narratives about life as a Vietnamese American and his soap-opera worthy family history. It’s descriptive without being boring and poignant but never cheesy. My main point in two words: READ IT.
So there you have it, dragons and catfish.
Where’s Haruki Murakami? He’s like the most complex, deep, well-known, modern Japanese author out in the world so far!
With praise like that I’ll definitely have to read something by him. Any particular recommendations?
He just visited Cal a few months ago (man, missed him), but I’d recommend Norwegian Wood (my favorite!); South of the Border, West of the Sun; Sputnik Sweetheart.
His writing reminds me a lot of Franz Kafka and F. Scott Fitzgerald (especially Great Gatsby, since he translated the Japanese version of it). Sometimes, it’s confusing about what his message is, but he has so many messages about human emotion that you are hooked into wondering: what is he saying??!
What I got out of his book is the following: he is trying to explore the lonliness of Japanese people (most of his readers are teenagers and college-students), the desire for people to return to their pasts, the hope to be acceppted by others, and dreams and long trips to break away from the past and start all over again. For me, I start thinking about Murakami’s words after I’ve read his work and been in a situation very similar to his stories (which is quite often, and the same to many people). It is a book you can definitely relate to, since he exposes flaws each individual has.
I should get a chance to reread some of his books again, because there are many more meanings I have not listed. Murakami is known to be heavily influenced by the West due to his lack of comfort toward Japanese culture during the 1960s and 70s, given his love for jazz music and allusions to popular songs and artists in his work.
Hoped that helped. I’m not used to writing book reviews, but he’s somebody worth noting.
If you are looking for short stories, definitely seek Murakami’s After the Quake (his stories were played inside the Berkeley Repository Theater, I believe, one or two years ago), a book describing what humans should value after disaster. Based on the 1995 Kobe Earthquake.