Sushi and Sourdough: A Novel by Tooru J. Kanazawa (review)

264 WesternAmerican Literature he successfully runs his ranch and raises cattle. We see in McLaren the embodi­ ment of the old ranching philosophy: “taking care of the land, so itwill take care ofyou.” Although Picken tells the story through Ed McLaren, her main character is the land, and the central conflict is over the land. In a step toward the universal, the language begins in the northwestern territory and experience, but in Picken’s hands it touches all landscapes and all life. Picken’s own philosophy seems that of the Indians: “. .. the Earth is everybody’s mother .. .” Echoing the novel’s pastoral beginning, Picken ends her saga with visions offireweed and Ed remembering: “When I came west at the turn of the century, the forest was open, like a park. Bunchgrass grew to a horse’s flanks. When the wind came up in the morning, the meadows rippled like water.”Picken relates her story the way the sagas of old must have been passed on. That is part of the joy of this exploration—to see that the old ways have not been lost. NANCYBLASINGAME ETHERIDGE Boise State University Sushi and Sourdough: A Novel. By Tooru J. Kanazawa. (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1989. 255 pages, $19.95.) The struggle for survival of European immigrants in the United States has long been a major theme in American history and literature. Until recent years however, relatively litde attention has been paid to the other immigrants, the Asian-Americans who landed on the western seaboard. Tooru J. Kanazawa’s novel Sushi and Sourdoughis one of a growing list of new titles that examines the harsh reality of life in America for immigrants who crossed the Pacific. Kanazawawas born in Spokane, Washington in November 1906. He was the first Nisei in his family, the first child of hisJapanese parents to be born in the United States. He spent much of his childhood in Southeastern Alaska, where his father owned a barbershop. This novel is based on the story of his family’s painful adjustment to life in the new land between the 1890s and the 1920s. It is a story that Kanazawa long carried in his heart; the author, who was 83 when the book appeared, explains that his early memories of life in Alaska, and his meetings with first-generation Japanese cannery workers, “planted within me the seed of a desire to tell the story of our Alaskan immigrant fathers and mothers as interpreted through my eyes and heart.” It is unfortunate that Kanazawa chose to write a historical novel instead ofa straightforward memoir. The fictional apparatus is clumsily constructed, and often gets in the way of the story he wants to tell. Irrelevant facts and anachro­ nisms, which might be appropriate in a personal recollection, are highly dis­ tracting in a novel. For instance when the boy in the story enrolls in first grade in 1912, he learns to parrot the Pledge of Allegiance. For some reason the Reviews 265 author includes a parenthetical note: “The words ‘under God’were added byan act of Congress in 1954.” The strongest part of the book is the last half, which is clearly based largely on Kanazawa’spersonal experiences as a child. Details such as his father’s use of old Sears Roebuck catalogs to wipe his razor in the barber shop, or how the children in Sunday school tricked the minister by singing “Bringing in the Cheese,”give an air of believable reality to the story. His account of working in a cannery makes the drudgery of the packing line all too real. Despite the novel’s structural flaws, Sushi and Sourdough presents many such wonderful details of pioneer life in Alaska as seen by a youngJapanese boy, and the book makes clear the lingering pain and scars of prejudice. TERRENCE COLE University ofAlaskaFairbanks Sonoran Desert Summer. ByJohn Alcock. (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1990. 187 pages, $19.95.) John Alcock writes of “noisy violence, sex, and excitement”in SonoranDesert Summer. But not in the guise of most other modern writers. The Sonoran Desert of southern Arizona and northwestern Mexico is home to diverse plants and animals which Alcock devotes himself to studying...