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In A Nuclear Family, April Naoko Heck combines family history with personal memory to produce a set of poems as readable as it is intimate.

What I liked:

• Although ‘like’ may not be the most appropriate word, I always appreciate nikkei writers telling stories of their family experiences. In the case of wartime experiences and specifically Hiroshima, I wonder if ‘nikkei writers chronicling Hiroshima’ would be more effectively examined as a subset of ‘Japanese writers chronicling Hiroshima’ or as a subset of nikkei literature. My inclination is to say both analyses yield worthwhile results, but I also ask this question because I wonder how nikkei writers chronicling Hiroshima are most commonly evaluated and/or contextualized by readers, nikkei and non-nikkei.

What I learned:

• This may be more of a question than a lesson, but reading Heck’s poems caused me to consider whether Hiroshima and other specific aspects of the war loom abnormally large in nikkei writings on family history. On one hand, the sheer scope of the tragedy of Hiroshima might arguably guarantee its place of significance in wartime accounts. On the other hand, not all Japanese people were affected by Hiroshima to the same extent. Are there many nikkei writers who find themselves reflecting on Hiroshima, not because it was what they originally intended, but because of editorial pressure? I’m thinking here of the recent surge in nikkei-authored writings on JA incarceration. Although it is absolutely critical for JA writers to take the lead in documenting JA history, I wonder how many of these writers might have initially pitched a completely unrelated idea, only to be encouraged to pursue a ‘hot’ topic like JA incarceration instead. This is merely a guess; I hope this is not the case. I also differentiate this situation from one in which a JA writer starts out with one idea but in the process of refining their work and/or developing as a creator, realizes they have a crucial story to tell about Hiroshima or JA incarceration.

Questions I had:

• How does Heck situate herself and her work in the existing body of nikkei literature? Would Heck agree that there is such a thing as a uniquely nikkei and/or Japanese American poetry?
• Did Heck envision any particular audience for these poems?
• What, if any, differences exist between poems written to/for an audience, versus poems which are written with little to no thought of an audience, but which simply end up being made accessible to an audience?

Follow-up:

• I would enjoy reading any of Heck’s forthcoming work related to Japanese/Nikkei experiences.