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4 August, 2003
Book Smart: JA Fiction for Teens
I've had a long and passionate ongoing love affair with books. I have a stack of them at all times that I'm in the middle of reading, and I try to find quality time to spend with them as often as I can - which unfortunately isn't all that often these days.
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So sometimes it takes me months before even I get to some of the titles I impulsively buy at Tattered Cover, Barnes & Nobles, or Borders, or Amazon.com.
I even had the book bug when I was a kid. I remember the anticipation of climbing aboard the hot, dusty bookmobile, the rolling library that would stop by every week. In a way, it was more exciting than going to the school library or the public library, because the selection of books in the bus was always different. But that was for borrowing books - a wonderful concept but one that never appealed to me as much as owning my own copies of books so I could "talk back" to them, folding the corners of pages, jotting notes in the margins and underlining passages that especially affected me. The only books I could abuse that way were my own books, not the library's. So I bought a lot of books, and still do. I remember the utter thrill of ordering my own books in grade school, through Scholastic Books, a New York-based publisher specializing in books for young people and teens - students just like me who were eager to immerse ourselves into pages and pages filled with words that brought the world to life.
Scholastic was formed over 80 years ago, and today it's the world's largest publisher of children's books, catering to children from pre-school to seventh grade. I looked forward every month to the catalogs to be passed out in class, and pore over the latest selection of books. I eagerly filled out the order form, bugged my parents for the money and then waited with bated breath for the prized titles to arrive.
These days, things are different. Kids can go online and order their books directly from Scholastic anytime, using mom and dad's credit cards.
 Author Ken Mochizuki |
Something else is different: The one thing I never had when I was a kid ordering books, was the opportunity to read any books about kids like me - Asian Americans. Japanese Americans.
All the books I read back then - in the mid-1960s - were about Caucasian kids and their adventures, or amazing animals and their adventures. I never read anything about kids who juggled their ethnic heritage with their all-American side. I don't remember reading anything about people with different colored skin, different language, different culture and different values. To be fair, there probably were books available by the late '60s about African Americans because of the burgeoning civil rights movement, but certainly there was nothing abut the Asian American experience, or anything that mentioned internment.
Now, at least, there are books for, and about, Asians.
I recently read Ken Mochizuki's "Beacon Hill Boys" from Scholastic, and it was a hoot. You may recognize Mochizuki's name from other books aimed at young readers, such as "Baseball Saved Us" and "Passage to Freedom: The Sugihara Story." The Seattle-based author is a popular lecturer as well. "Beacon Hill Boys," a slim novel - remember, these books are for kids, so you won't find "War and Peace" - is a snapshot of junior year of high school for a group of Japanese American friends in a Seattle neighborhood. The book, which is partly autobiographical for Mochizuki, is set in 1972, making it right within my own high school years. Mochizuki perfectly captures the times, with the specter of the Vietnam war still looming over young peoples' lives, and the language and references to the music of the times weaving their way in and out of the pages like still-vivid memories glowing with Kodachrome hues.
The story is told from the point of view of Dan Inagaki, whose older brother Brad is a senior and a typical Sansei: a good student and a hard-working jock who's the school's star quarterback, and Mr. Popular at school. Dan isn't interested in following his brother's footsteps and instead grows his hair long, gets only average grades, blows off a job after one week and can't make himself even speak to the girl he has a crush on.
His parents are on his case all the time, and he constantly confronts their Nisei values.
| "Just being good kids with good grades so we could grow up to be like our good brothers and sisters didn't cut it anymore…." |
Early in the book, the author sets out his perspective, after comparing JAs to African Americans and the rise of the "Black Power" movement: "Us Asians, we had nothing cool we could call our own," Mochizuki writes as Dan. "In fact, we were just getting used to calling ourselves 'Asians' instead of 'Orientals' like our parents did. And just being good kids with good grades so we could grow up to be like our good brothers and sisters didn't cut it anymore…."
Dan's frustrations with the world around him ignites his sense of justice, though, and he sticks up for the underdog - including, ironically, Asians. He helps to get an Asian studies program started at the school, and becomes an unexpected hero to some of the other students. In the course of his maturation process, he also learns about internment and his parents' camp experience, making him better understand why they act the way they do.
Until then, however, his parents seldom speak about internment to their kids. "A four-letter word that had always intrigued me was 'camp,'" Dan muses. "And like the subject of sex, when adults acted as though I wasn't supposed t know about it, I wanted to know even more."
The learning brings him closer to his parents, as he begins to see the older generation of JAs in an entirely different light.
"Beacon Hill Boys" is a quick read for adults, but I'd recommend it. Then you can hand it down to your kids, because they'll be surprised to see they have more in common with you than they thought.
Mochizuki's work is especially important because he's a contemporary JA voice, serving as a bridge between the values and traditions of the Issei and Nisei generations and the Yonsei and Gosei who are growing up today. Without such a bridge, the history of the JA community remains just that - old, dry, forgotten history - instead of coming alive for the leaders of tomorrow.
You can order "Beacon Hill Boys" online from Scholastic Press.