WHERE THE DEAD PAUSE, AND THE JAPANESE SAY GOODBYE

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WHERE THE DEAD PAUSE, AND THE JAPANESE SAY GOODBYE

Name: WHERE THE DEAD PAUSE, AND THE JAPANESE SAY GOODBYE
Author: Marie Mutsuki Mockett
ISBN: 978-0393063011

A JOURNEY

by Marie Mutsuki Mockett ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 19, 2015

Mockett, who speaks Japanese (though not perfectly), is an observant and respectful guide to Japanese customs, open to new...

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A journey through Japanese culture and religion by a Japanese-American woman grieving for her dead father and concerned that she will be unable to pass on her heritage to her young son.

Mockett (Picking Bones from Ash, 2009) returned to Japan after the 2011 tsunami and nuclear disaster, accompanied by her mother and her young son. After visiting the family-run temple located not far from the Fukushima nuclear reactor, the author made pilgrimages to other temples, met with priests, examined their treasures and tried out different forms of Buddhist meditation. Doing so provided her with the opportunity to not only describe, often at length, present-day people, buildings, festivals, places, moods and customs, but to delve into the stories behind them. One chapter is devoted to a history of Buddhism, in which readers may be surprised to learn that if they choose, Buddhists are quite free to celebrate one of the many Shinto gods. Because of the radiation danger at the cemetery in 2011, the bones of the author’s grandfather could not be buried during that year’s Obon, the annual Buddhist festival in which ancestors' spirits return to this world to visit their relatives. At the heart of the book is the Obon festival of 2012, a time when the author visited a crematorium for a close-up look at how the Japanese treat the remains of loved ones, attended the burial for her grandfather’s bones, observed Obon’s beautiful and healing rituals, and hoped that it would bring her relief from grief over the death of her father.

Mockett, who speaks Japanese (though not perfectly), is an observant and respectful guide to Japanese customs, open to new experiences and sensitive to changes in the culture. If she sometimes rambles on or wanders off, the trip is still worth it.

Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2015

ISBN: 978-0393063011

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Norton

Review Posted Online: Oct. 19, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2014

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES | GENERAL CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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PICKING BONES FROM ASH
by Marie Mutsuki Mockett

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.

Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.

Well-told and admonitory.

Pub Date: June 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-06-074486-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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NIGHT

by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...

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Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.

He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.