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ampersandread22's review
1.0
Had to read this book for an English class. It became too convoluted for my taste.
sonicdonutflour's review
dark
emotional
funny
mysterious
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.5
An ambitious look at neoliberalism, borders, mental health, and generational trauma told through a magical realist story about LA
cherylcheng00's review
4.0
The freeway was a great root system, an organic living entity. It was nothing more than a great writhing concrete dinosaur and nothing less than the greatest orchestra on Earth.
Like Buzzworm said, every watch has got a story. Everybody’s got a timepiece and a piece of time. Watch was an outward reflection of your personal time. Had nothing to do with being on time. Had to do with a sense of time. Sense of urgency. Sense of rhythm. Cadence. Sense of history. Like listening to oldies with Margarita. Time could heal, but it wouldn’t make wrongs go away. Time came back like a reminder. Time folded with memory. In a moment, everything could fold itself up, and time stand still.
“Will you wait for me on the other side?” she whispered as the line in the dust became again as wide as an entire culture and as deep as the social and economic construct that nobody knew how to change.
Like Buzzworm said, every watch has got a story. Everybody’s got a timepiece and a piece of time. Watch was an outward reflection of your personal time. Had nothing to do with being on time. Had to do with a sense of time. Sense of urgency. Sense of rhythm. Cadence. Sense of history. Like listening to oldies with Margarita. Time could heal, but it wouldn’t make wrongs go away. Time came back like a reminder. Time folded with memory. In a moment, everything could fold itself up, and time stand still.
“Will you wait for me on the other side?” she whispered as the line in the dust became again as wide as an entire culture and as deep as the social and economic construct that nobody knew how to change.
castranosis's review
2.0
Read this for my Asian American Fiction class.
I spent a lot of time in this novel confussed as to what was going on. It had some interesting ideas in it but I didn't quite understand it.
I spent a lot of time in this novel confussed as to what was going on. It had some interesting ideas in it but I didn't quite understand it.
kirstiecat's review
adventurous
emotional
funny
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
Yamashita is always so imaginative in the way she writes both memorable characters and interwoven plots. I can’t predict any endings for any of their lives and that is quite something indeed. If you don’t like magical realism or complex storylines, you may miss out on the brilliance that is Yamashita and the bulk of her work. But, if you find yourself wanting to explore what creative literature is capable of, please look no further!
bananab23's review
adventurous
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
3.75
spacestationtrustfund's review
5.0
I am merely a character in a poem.When I was a kid, around once a year my family would travel to visit my maternal grandparents, a journey which meant around 10-12 hours of sitting in a cramped uncomfortable seat next to my younger brother and staring out the window to watch the ground rush past. But I loved the actual experience of visiting my grandparents and all their curiosities, so far removed from the culture to which I was accustomed, and whenever it was time to leave I would wish I could grab onto the land with both fists and pull and pull until I'd dragged it with me across a continent, back home.
This sort of thing is, I think, an experience shared by many people who grew up feeling untethered to one culture or location—immigrants, diaspora, migrants, even those whose family moved frequently. Cultural identity is a slippery thing, prone to deceit, and constantly mutating. I've been reluctant to connect myself to any one specific cultural background, in part because I was lucky enough to be raised by a mother who understood the importance of a multicultural and multilinguistic education (she loved to tell me how my first word, "more," was in sign language). I was born far down south, very close to the beach and the ocean, the kind of place where it would rain while the sun still shone and tourists were as plentiful as locals. But the place I was born was not the place from whence my family came, and the place I live now is neither. The language I speak with my friends is not the same language I speak with my family. I hesitate to define my ethnicity or nationality by anything too specific, because I don't really feel intrinsically connected to any one place or culture or history—I couldn't take it with me, and so it is left behind.
Karen Tei Yamashita's 1997 novel involves a landscape which physically shifts along with the people attached to it, influencing and being influenced by their migration. The plot rapidly deepens like a coastal shelf. Every page is steeped in the immigrant experience, where the eponymous orange represents the diaspora made manifest: the line, invisible yet tangible, slowly being dragged along behind the characters' cultural drift to the point where it's being held together by a single person. Characters shrug out of and into cultural identities like coats from chapter to chapter. Everything has another layer beneath it, another fault line. It unpeels like Yamashita's orange, bright and citrus and full of physicality.
This book made me wish I gave a damn about LA. It also made me want to eat an orange—but hopefully one which does not contain the Tropic of Cancer.
bakkabennu's review
3.0
This was okay. The way she described the dragging of the tropic line was interesting. However, Yamashita was really preachy, yet somehow she still managed to be not terribly coherent about what she was preaching. I liked the different chapters with different styles and the way the characters interacted though. It was okay in terms of the magical realism genre, but after finishing this novel I'm getting back to my Borges.
ayafr's review
karen i'm so sorry, i'll return to you in another book i promise! (dnf)