DaNi's Posts

DaNi Son

US LitH

What I love most about this book is the overall plotline of the book and how wonderfully written it is.  I also love that once Henry sees the women with the red umbrella that all these wonderful yet tragic memories come flooding back. Henry meets this young Japanese girl, named Keiko, who just recently moved to Seattle to attend Rainier. They form a tight friendship but with the complications of the war, Keiko and her family are sent to an internment camp for the Japanese. After her family is evacuated and sent to Idaho, Henry flees and tries to find Keiko and her family and sneak them out. It just shows how much Henry is willing to risk in order to save her family, despite his family, and his father’s beliefs.

What I liked the least was Henry’s father. Even though he was trying to fair and protect his own family, he was such a terrifying and cruel man. One passage that made me so angry was when Henry comes home and his mother sets the table for him but Henry’s father interrupts, “Are you expecting a guest for dinner?” (187). He doesn’t even acknowledge that his son is still apart of the family yet he treats him like a stranger. He is so caught up in having a normal life that he pushes away his only son, and I think that’s exceptionally cruel.

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I think that one of the most powerful passages that I’ve read was when Henry’s father is yelling at Henry about the family albums that belonged to Keiko. He had ripped up the photo album and tossed it out the window. Henry wanted to keep her promise but his father would not have any of it because he couldn’t risk his family getting sent to jail. As Henry approaches the door, his father points to the door and says, “if you walk out that door--if you walk out that door now, you are no longer part of this family, You are no longer Chinese. You are not part of us anymore. Not a part of me.” To which Henry replies, “I...am an American” His father has made everything Henry is now. He was the one who had told him to stop speaking Cantonese at home so that they could be American. And when he hands Henry another button that reads, “I am American.” I find that so significant because he’s finally standing up against his father but also the fact that his father says, “You are no longer Cantonese” it totally contradicts what his father wants Henry to be. To be a normal American.