A review by cais
An I-Novel by Minae Mizumura

5.0

“So the gulf was not between me and America. It was something more like a gulf between myself and my American self, or between my Japanese self and my American self--or, to still be more precise, between my Japanese-language self and my English-language self.”

Minae Mizumura took the Japanese genre of the I novel (autobiographical fiction) & upended it. Instead of the confessions of a male Japanese author, we get the inner life, with all its observations, fears & dreams, of young Minae who moved to the U.S. at 12, a huge life shift that left her with a fractured sense of identity. She never feels fully at home in the English language & always feels “other” because she is not white. Leaving Japan during adolescence leaves her longing for it, for the childhood comfort of it, but also feeling increasingly isolated from it the longer she lives in the U.S.

Minae is both the protagonist in the story & the author herself. In interviews (there’s a great one with Benjamin Moser) Mizumura says the events in this book are pretty true to real life, down to some of the dialogue. Of course, she also says I novels allow “fiction ample play” so, as with any work based on life & memory, there is creative embellishment here. The story takes place in one day in Minae’s tiny apartment on the 20th anniversary of her family’s move to the U.S., but not really, because most of the book consists of Minae reflecting on her entire life. Through these reflections we travel between countries, homes & many conversations. Mizumura manages this time-travel so beautifully, so seamlessly, that I felt fully emerged in Minae’s life, in her sense of self.

Despite its POV naturalism & candidness, its surprising humor, there is a particular quality to this book, a feeling of being in multiple places at once, or rather neither firmly here nor there. The harsh realities of life are here, but so is the dreamlike quality of the longing of a displaced consciousness. Minae is physically in one country, but emotionally in another. She exists in a liminal space. Only when she makes a firm decision about where she really wants her life to be, about what she wants to do (or at least attempt to do), does she feel like she can really live her life. This book, my second by Mizumura, was such a pleasure to read.

An important aspect of this book is the different typefaces used. The original published novel changes between English & Japanese, with a bit of French & other languages as well. Translator Juliet Winters Carpenter (who is so brilliant) decided to use different typefaces to indicate a switch between languages. Also, there are black & white photos throughout this book, things like a tree in Long Island & a sidewalk in NYC, which I am assuming was for the benefit of Japanese readers during the initial publication in 1995 (?). Whatever the reason, they add a nice element to the book.