February 2010: The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

Hosts: John and Emily's
Book: The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jaimie Ford.
Discussion leader: Lynne Armstrong
Recipes: See post

The book about Seattle's Japanese and Chinese communities during World War II brought us together, minus Schefflers (babysitting) and Frank (enjoying the warmth of Florida). Crab rangoon's by Wayne and a plethora of Chinese and Japanese appetizers from Sue & Jerry set the stage for a good discussion.

Kathy suggested I include a synosis of the book on this site, since we're getting older and our memories are getting shorter, so here goes, courtesy of Publisher's Weekly;s excerpt on Amazon:

Ford's strained debut concerns Henry Lee, a Chinese-American in Seattle who, in 1986, has just lost his wife to cancer. After Henry hears that the belongings of Japanese immigrants interned during WWII have been found in the basement of the Panama Hotel, the narrative shuttles between 1986 and the 1940s in a predictable story that chronicles the losses of old age and the bewilderment of youth. Henry recalls the difficulties of life in America during WWII, when he and his Japanese-American school friend, Keiko, wandered through wartime Seattle. Keiko and her family are later interned in a camp, and Henry, horrified by America's anti-Japanese hysteria, is further conflicted because of his Chinese father's anti-Japanese sentiment. Henry's adult life in 1986 is rather mechanically rendered, and Ford clumsily contrasts Henry's difficulty in communicating with his college-age son, Marty, with Henry's own alienation from his father, who was determined to Americanize him. The wartime persecution of Japanese immigrants is presented well, but the flatness of the narrative and Ford's reliance on numerous cultural cliches make for a disappointing read.