Book Spotlight: City Under One Roof – Iris Yamashita

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City Under One Roof, by Iris Yamashita, follows police detective Cara Kennedy as she investigates a murder in a unique Alaska community.

What I liked:

So I definitely looked up Whittier, Alaska because the living situation at Point Mettier was unlike anything I had ever come across. In hindsight, it makes sense, given the environment and especially the weather conditions. It never occurred to me that undocumented people like Amy and her mom might live somewhere like Point Mettier, but I hope all of these people find safety wherever they choose to reside.
I’m not sure how much crossover exists between film writing and novel writing, but Yamashita certainly knows how to pen a page-turner. It only took me a few days to read this book and I never hit a point where I got too bored and had to put it down.

What I learned:

Are there a lot of settlers and/or non-indigenous folks (from what I understand, certain non-indigenous folks are not necessarily viewed in the same light as settlers, such as refugees or the descendants of enslaved people) who move to indigenous communities to escape the law? Intermarriage is one thing, if it grows out of a genuine relationship rather than coercion or lack of other choices, but Yamashita’s depiction of the role Wolf and his gang occupy in the Chugach village seems no different from the reason certain Europeans came to this continent originally. I’ll have to look for indigenous-authored scholarship on this topic.

Questions I had:

What type of research did Yamashita do for this book, specifically with regard to depicting the indigenous peoples and cultures of Alaska? How have indigenous readers responded to this book?
Why did Yamashita choose to set her book in Alaska? Does she have a personal connection to the people, cultures, or locations?
Cara is described as mixed race – Asian, indigenous (Native), and white – but no additional details are provided about her ancestry. I wonder if this is because being mixed race is common enough to be unremarkable in Alaska, and Yamashita was adhering to cultural norms, or if there was any editorial pressure with regard to portraying a main character of color. I’ve noticed a trend in some mysteries and thrillers by writers of color in which, even if the MC is a person of color, they are virtually indistinguishable on the page from a white MC. I don’t know if these portrayals stem from the writers’ own experiences or from a desire to depict people of color as “no different” from white people or if they are shaped by publisher expectations.
What has been Yamashita’s experience as a woman of color, perhaps even specifically as a Japanese/nikkei woman, in the film writing world? What would she have to say about the role of nikkei creators in the US entertainment industry? How does she situate herself and her work in the context of US nikkei literature?

Follow-up: