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Barn Cat, by Kyoko Mori, follows Yuri (aka Lily) as she attempts to locate her mother.

What I liked:

• Although I’m familiar with people renaming themselves using one language’s equivalent of their name in their original language, I found “Lily” a somewhat amusing choice because it consists of sounds that would probably be difficult for most nihonjin to pronounce if they are unaccustomed to speaking English. Then again, Yuri indicates Kumiko studied English at a designated school in Japan, so perhaps Kumiko felt comfortable with a name like “Lily” by the time she moved to the US.
• I have not looked up Mori’s biography recently – I know I did in the past, but I no longer recall the details – but the plot, tone, and themes of Barn Cat struck me as very personal, perhaps even autobiographical. This may just be my perspective as someone who prefers to write fantasy, but the extremely specific depictions of Yuri’s experiences as a young child moving from Japan to the US, including the choice of year/era, seem to me to tell a story that would be difficult to craft without the author having lived part of it herself. I hope I’m not succumbing to the stereotype of assuming all authors of color are writing autobiographical stories if they write about their own cultures in a quasi-contemporary setting, but as I did not feel this way when I read, for example, Debbi Michiko Florence’s books (though I do expect Florence’s personal knowledge and experiences of nikkei culture inform her work), I wonder if my theory is at least somewhat accurate.
• Major kudos to Yuri for being so forthright in her reason for leaving Sam. I’m not sure if this part of the story is a commentary on men in general or white men in particular, but I’ve witnessed more than one uncomfortable, racism-infused relationship between white men and nihonjin women, and it’s something that’s always in the back of my mind when I meet any nihonjin woman/white man couple. It would be interesting to read a joint nihonjin/nikkei scholarly analysis on the dynamics of these relationships, in particular how the interaction between nihonjin cultural values/social norms and white cultural values/social norms shape the experiences of the nihonjin women in these relationships.
• My mother is shin-issei like Kumiko, though my dad is nikkei (nisei, sansei, depending on which of my grandparents is in question), but my life experiences are so utterly distant from Yuri’s experiences that I still felt in many ways as if I was “outside, looking in” while reading Barn Cat. This is not a negative thing, per se, but rather a refreshing reminder of our diverse nikkei community.

What I learned:

• In my personal experience, nikkei with at least one shin-issei parent tend to have closer ties to Japanese culture than nikkei who do not have shin-issei parents, which often also includes active relationships with nihonjin relatives. I’ve never considered a situation like Yuri’s, in which, in spite of being shin-issei herself, her family circumstances in Japan meant she had zero connections there after moving to the US. This is a fascinating angle on nikkei history, as I believe nikkei (specifically JA) history is often contextualized in terms of WWII, with gaps in family knowledge and/or connections often attributed to ancestors being far removed from Japan. I see some interesting opportunities for nihonjin/nikkei collaboration with regard to this topic and I also think nihonjin university exchange students might have useful insights to share, perhaps even with the members of their local nikkei student union.

Questions I had:

• Did Mori envision a particular audience for this book? Did she have any expectations or desires for how nihonjin and/or nikkei readers would respond to this book?
• How have fellow nikkei readers responded to this book?

Follow-up:

• I have several of Mori’s books in my TBR somewhere – after reading Barn Cat, I’m feeling much more motivated to locate them!
• It would be really interesting if a nikkei team put together a film based on Barn Cat, because it illuminates an aspect of shin-issei experiences that I do not often see in the work of today’s rising nikkei writers.