The Language Inside by Holly Thompson

Emma Karas has traveled with her family from Kamakura, Japan to America with her family so her mother can receive cancer treatment. Emma, her younger brother Toby and her parents left shortly after her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer.

Although Emma was born in the United States, she has lived most of her life in Japan and considers herself Japanese. When she was in Grade Nine, Emma transferred from a Japanese school to an international school. It was during this year that the devastating earthquake and tsunami struck northern Japan. Although her family was fine, some of her friends lost relatives. Emma and her father helped her best friend, Madoka and her dad clean up Madoka's grandparent's home in Miyagi. During the cleanup, Emma learned her mother was sick and that they must leave for America. Emma's plans to play varsity volleyball, attend a Model UN conference in the Philippines and to visit her friend Madoka were put on hold as their lives underwent a drastic change.

Now Emma finds herself, her mother and Toby living in a small town outside Lowell, Massachusetts, with her father's mother, YiaYia, while her father works in his firm's office in New York. She is enrolled in Grade Ten at the local high school. Emma misses her father and her friends, Madoka, Kako, Kenji, and Shin in Japan. In addition to coping with her mother's illness, Emma feels like she has abandoned her Japanese friends when their need was greatest. The stress of all these changes and her mother's illness leads her to suffer from severe migraines.

Hoping to help her granddaughter adjust to life in America, YiaYia arranges for Emma to volunteer at the Newall Center for Long Term Care as a poetry helper. Emma's first time at the center is marred by a migraine which causes her to collapse. A fellow student, Samnang, whom she was supposed to meet there, arranges for her to be taken to back to her aunt's home. Samnang's kindness to her is that start of a friendship that will blossom into a romance.

At the Newall Center, Emma is paired with a forty-six year old woman, Zena who has "locked in syndrome" and who can only communicate using her eyes. To communicate with Zena, Emma must use a special letter board.  Samnang  is paired with  two men Leap Sok and Chea Pen who are Cambodian refugees and who escaped the Pol Pot regime years ago.

Emma learns that Samnang is Cambodian and that there is a large Cambodian refugee population in Lowell, Massachusetts. He is part of a Khmer dance troupe and as Emma and Samnang's friendship develops she also learns that his life hasn't been an easy one. Emma can relate to some of Samnang's struggles to find his place in America. Although she is white, she feels Japanese. But in America, she doesn't look like she's out of place. As she tells Samnang, the language inside her is different from the language outside.
it's not just losing
Japanese words
and phrases

it's as if I've lost
half of myself here
but no one knows
because I'm a white girl

here
I don't look like I belong in Japan
here
I don't look out of place
here
everyone thinks I must be glad
to be "back" in Massachusetts

as if this were home
            but it's not 

Emma's work with Zena makes her realize how much her mother will need her in the coming weeks and months as she recovers from breast cancer. She wants to go back to Japan, but she doesn't want to be like Zena's daughter who "swam off with her sister" leaving her alone in the rehabilitation center. She begins to recognize that maybe she has a duty to help her mother as she struggles to heal from her illness. In addition to this Emma begins to realize that  she has many good things in her new life in America, not the least of which is her friendship with Samnang and her growing relationship with the Cambodian community. When her parents give her the option of returning to Japan with her father, Emma must make a difficult decision, one that will affect her life for years to come.

Discussion

The Language Inside is a beautifully crafted novel that tackles many different issues and does so very ably. There is the overarching theme of identity with Emma who is American but who feels Japanese inside and Samnang who is American but feels Cambodian. This struggle is reflected in the book's title about the language inside (that is how we feel and who we are) being different than what appears to be on the outside. Through dance both Samnang and eventually Emma begin to reconcile their two worlds.

This theme of identity is also expressed in the character of Zena who has "locked-in syndrome". On the outside Zena appears to be a person who can't communicate, appearing to have a life that is very limited. But Zena has a remarkable inner life that is trapped within her. Because she cannot readily communicate, her thoughts or "language" remains trapped inside her. Emma helps Zena to bring this "language inside" to those around her, through the creation of her poetry.

Zena was modeled after Julia Tavalaro, who was a 31 year old mother who suffered a debilitating stroke that left her paralyzed and apparently unconscious. Many years later it was discovered that Julia was fully aware of the world around her  but that she was only able to communicate using the motions of her eyes and head. 

Holly Thompson's free verse captures equally well the fear and hurt of a young girl struggling to cope with a new life and a family crisis, as well as the blossoming of a first love. Well written, evocative and fascinating, this lovely novel is for fans of poetry and also for those who wish to sample this genre. Thompson who was born in America, lives in Japan. This is her second verse novel.

Book Details:
The Language Inside by Holly Thompson
New York: Delacourte Press     2013
521 pp.

Orchards by Holly Thompson

Kanako (Kana) Goldberg who is an eighth grader, is being sent to Japan to spend some time with her mother's family. She is being sent there for the summer after the suicide of Ruth, one of her classmates.  Ruth was found in the Osgood orchards, having hanged herself from one of the apple trees. She left a note on her dresser leading her parents to call police and to counselors being brought in. Kanako tells her parents, 

"why?

I protested

it wasn't my fault

I didn't do anything!"

Her mother calls her older sister, Kanako's aunt in Shizuoka and in spite of Kanako's protests tells her,

"all she'd say
row after row
in tight-lipped
talk-down
do-as-I-say
Japanese
was

you can reflect

in the presence of your ancestors"

All twenty-nine girls from Kanako's grade eight class are being sent somewhere. She was part of a clique of girls who were mean to Ruth. Kana likens her clique to the structure of an atom, in which Lisa, head of the clique, is the atom and the other girls are like electrons arranged in shells around her. Ruth, the girl who committed suicide was "in the least stable most vulnerable outermost shell".

Kanako's father is a Russian Jew while her mother is the youngest of four children born to her grandparents who are mikan orange farmers. Her mother's family lived in a Shizuoka village of only sixty families where the son inherited the family property. Since there was no son to inherit the property, Kanako's oldest sister married a man  who took on their family name and inherited the farm. Her mother packs her suitcase full of gifts for the family back in Japan as well as ten books on responsbility, and self-discovery.

Kanako is met in Narita by her cousins Koichi and Yurie. As they drive to the farm in the van, Yurie tells Kanako that she will room with her. When Kanako last visited her Baachan three years ago after the death of her grandfather, her Jiichan, Baachan made comments about her size. Kanako's aunt and uncle bow to her and welcome her to their home. For the first three days, Kanako wakes early, even before Yurie who gets up early to help with chores before going to her job at the pharmacy.

On her fourth day in Kohama, Kanako's uncle takes her to meet the homeroom teacher and principal of the middle school she will attend while in Japan. She will attend class part time for four weeks. So every weekday morning, along with two other girls from Kohama, Kanako pedals her bicycle up a steep hill to the school situated on top of a hill of mikan terraces. Kanako can read Japanese because she took classes in New York. As Kanako watches the students in this school she remembers how Ruth sat and talked with Jake Osgood whom Lisa wanted to date. 

In the afternoons, Kanako helps in the mikan groves, thinning clusters of excess mikan fruit from the trees. Kanako's aunt asks her about her school in New York her mother's business but nothing about what happened even though she's sure her aunt knows.

When Kanako sees the same situation developing in her Japanese school, a girl ostracized and ridiculed, she attempts to do what counselors told her back home, reach out, but the girl isn't interested in her help or friendship. Kanako tries to connect with her friends back home, but it seems things have changed: they are polite and restrained.

In a flashback, Kanako reveals how her parents met: her mother, after failing her college entrance exams, took a job in the district agricultural office and then flew to New York. There, living with three Japanese, she took community college class and worked at a Japanese restaurant where she learned how to wear a kimono. It was at the restaurant that she met Kanako's father who was a law student at the time. Soon they were meeting on Sunday for brunch. However, Kanako's Jiichan and Baachan lured her mother home with the promise of money to purchase land for hothouses so she could start her own business. Kanako's mother came home to Kohama because she felt that Kanako's father "didn't fit her future". She returned to working in the agricultural office while planning to set up a business to grow "salad greens and heirloom vegetables". However, Kanako's father didn't give up and after graduating he flew to Narita, located the home of Sachiko Mano and proposed to her mother in the driveway. They married three weeks later and eventually moved to a suburb of New York City. Eventually her parents bought a small house with enough land for some greenhouses for her mother to grow Japanese vegetables. 

As the business thrived, Kanako and then her sister Emi were born. Their family visited Japan but it wasn't long before Kanako began to realize that the relationship between the two families was strained. They never stayed with Jiichan and Baachan but at other relatives homes. It was when Jiichan got cancer that he changed towards Kanako and her family, teaching her many interesting things. Considering this, Kanako begins to consider what Lisa's life may have been like.

Once school is done, Kanako works full days on the mikan farm. And in the silence of the hard work, Kanako has time to think about Ruth, what happened that fateful day in Osgoods orchard and how she can be better going forward. Her time with her mother's Japanese family leads to acceptance, forgiveness and healing.

Discussion

Orchards by Holly Thompson is a free verse  novel that explores the issue of bullying and teen suicide. In the novel, Kanako is part of a clique of grade eight girls who bully their classmate, Ruth. The girl at the center of this clique, Lisa likes a boy named Jake Osgood. When they see Jake and Ruth spending time together they bully Ruth, whom they assume is attempting to interfere. What they do not know is that Jake whose sister is bipolar, is attempting to help Ruth who has started to suffer from intense mood swings of depression and manic happiness. Because of their bullying, Ruth hangs herself in the Osgoods' orchard, leaving a suicide note that implicates the clique of girls. 

Kanako's family sends her to stay with family in Japan in the hopes that while she is away she can think about what happened. As Kanako spends the next three months with her mother's family in Japan, she experiences an inner journey of self-revelation and discovery. 

Initially Kanako views Ruth with anger and a complete lack of empathy for what happened to her. Bullied and not included, Ruth is described by Kanako as inconsequential, like a "least stable" electron in the outer shell of a clique whose atom was a girl named Lisa, known for her "biting wit". 

Initially Kanako can't comprehend why she and her friends are to blame for Ruth's suicide.

"still

I don't think I

personally

did anything to drive you

to perfect slipknots

or learn to tie a noose..."

Instead, she callously blames Ruth for her banishment to Japan.

"because of you, Ruth,

I'm exiled

to my maternal grandmother, Baachan,

to the ancestors at the altar

and to Uncle, Aunt and cousins..."

Kanako wonders if things would be different if she had grown up Jewish attending synagogue and Hebrew school and going to Ruth's Bat Mitzvah. She also believes that Ruth should have told them what she and Jake Osgoods talked about. 

As she works in the mikan orchard thinning fruit, Kanako thinks about Ruth and wonders if she should have approached her at the mall, eaten lunch with her in the cafeteria, or invited her to be a part of her group in science, even though she seemed to want to be alone. But she also curses Ruth in an moment that shows her lack of gratitude towards her Japanese family, after Baachan is not pleased with her mother sending over more sun hats.  

In remembering how her parents met and the way her Japanese grandparents felt about their daughter marrying an American, Kanako begins to realize that there are "two sides to every story" and that this might apply to Ruth and what happened to her. Kanako's grandfather, Jiichan was mean to her mother and father and their family because he was hurting from the loss of his daughter who had moved to America after her marriage. Kanako wonders if Lisa living with her godparents instead of her parents was what made her so mean to Ruth.

fault and blame --
both seem so easy to place
but much harder
maybe
to erase

I think
there must be at least
two sides
to your story, too, Ruth,

and maybe knowing
more of Lisa's side

In an attempt to banish thoughts of Ruth, Kanako tries to find comfort in being very busy and adapting to life in Japan. A trip to Tokyo on Marine Day, with older second cousin Asuka, provides some relief to Kana, but when she returns, the long days of work in the mikan orchard provide opportunities for more soul searching.

In remembering the days after Ruth's death, Kanako considers how when people began blaming the grade eight girls, their sadness turned to anger and how they blamed Ruth,
"they were just words, Ruth,

what Lisa said

you didn't have to listen

to words

four words

hurled

in jealousy"

Kanako remembers how a group session with a counselor led them to learn that there was another side to Ruth's story, that she was experiencing depression and believed that she might be bipolar and that Jake was trying to help Ruth because his own sister was dealing with the same issues. 

It is Kanako's grandmother, Baachan who really helps her process what has happened and helps her when new tragedy strikes. Kanako comes to realize that her mother's family knows far more about what happened than she realizes. At the prompting of Baachan, Kanako reaches out to Jake via a letter and he responds back about how he's trying not to hate himself and others for what they didn't do. 

"I try not to hate Lisa

for what she did

but it's hard

I try not to hate myself, too

I try not to hate all of us

for what we didn't do"

Kanako considers what she could have done would include talking, listening and including Ruth. And she hopes that there is a way to show people that she and her friends are different now. Even though Jake does reach out to Lisa, she also commits suicide, devastating Kanako.  It is Baachan, normally reticent and sharp with Kanako who helps. She stays with Kanako, feeding her and sleeping beside her. Jake's message to Lisa is revealed as one that offers encouragement and a way forward for all of them.

"we can't hate ourselves

just find a way to make this

turn you into someone

better than you were

that's what we all have to do

that's all we can do"

Because she has watched everything unfold from a distance, Baachan's offers a clear perspective of what has happened.Kanako asks Baachan if she thinks it was a mistake to have Jake contact Lisa but Baachan responds that it was a mistake to send Lisa away to summer school in another state alone, without any support. Baachan points out to Kanako that she has been sent to stay with family who love her and could offer her support. Lisa did not have this and could not cope with the guilt she felt. Eventually it is Kanako's Japanese family's traditions that offer her a way forward, of honoring both Ruth and Lisa and providing healing for her friends and herself.

Orchards is a well crafted novel that explores the issue of teen suicide and bullying. One of the strongest messages Thompson offers her young readers is to never assume something about someone else. Outward actions and appearances may not be a true reflection of what is going on in their life.  We can't know the battles that a person is fighting daily. This is why kindness and thoughtful empathy are so important.

Book Details:
Orchards by Holly Thompson Illustrations by Grady McFerrin
New York: Delacorte Press 2011
325 pp.