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Saucy, by Cynthia Kadohata, is the story of a lost piglet and of Becca, the girl who adopts her.

What I liked:

• I picked up this book for two reasons – the pig on the cover and Cynthia Kadohata, who is probably one of the most featured authors in Book Spotlight posts. The genre – MG contemporary – is not one I generally gravitate toward, so I was surprised that I enjoyed this book as much as I did. I actually read it in two sittings, which is highly unusual; I don’t remember the last time I read a full-length novel in such a short time. Even more strangely, it’s difficult to pinpoint exactly why this book was a page-turner for me. The basic plot is fairly straightforward, but, as with much of Kadohata’s work, I found myself looking closely at the breadth and depth of meaning Kadohata conveys in deceptively spare prose. Becca’s rapport with her family, especially her three brothers, seems ordinary and childlike at first glance, but Kadohata’s unassuming portrayal of the small gestures that form the basis of their relationships perfectly captures sibling intimacy.

What I learned:

• Japanese-ness, at least in a context recognizable to me, is scarcely present in this story, except for the brief mention of Becca’s family history. Character descriptions are sketchy at best, which I found interesting, since so many other authors of color seem to highlight their characters’ appearances to emphasize and affirm their existence as people of color. If not for a few hints here and there, I would have easily read Becca’s family as white. I imagine this was anticipated and even planned by Kadohata, but I wonder about the reason. For one thing, based on my reading of the novel, Becca and her immediate family are white-passing, or at least not sufficiently ‘nonwhite’ to be racialized in their seemingly predominantly white town. For another, I’m curious about where we might draw the line – or does a line even need to be drawn? – between normalizing characters of color by deliberately presenting them in the same way white characters are presented (as a ‘race-less’ default) and having this decision mistaken, by POC and white readers alike, as simply giving way to whiteness by erasing so-called ‘undesirable’ (often interchanged with words like ‘ethnic’ or ‘racial’ because white default) qualities from the page. I get the sense both of these editorial decisions occur regularly in mainstream US publishing.

Questions I had:

• What motivated Kadohata to write about a pig? I mean, I quite enjoy pigs, but it rarely occurs to me to write about them.
• How do readers with cerebral palsy feel about the representation of Bailey? What was Kadohata’s intent in creating the character of Bailey?

Follow-up:

• It seems statistically unlikely that Kadohata will write another book about a pig, so as follow-up I’ll keep an eye out for other books by nikkei writers that feature pigs.