Rating: 
Summary: Nisei brother speaks
Review: This is an important and honest look at the Japanese American experience in this country. As a nisei with Japanese parents, I did not experience the impact of the internments through them, but David Mura's honesty about his experience truly resonates with my experience. The negative Kirkus review of his other book "Where the body meets memory" here on Amazon makes me angry and I suspect that the person who wrote it has no understanding of the experiences of Japanese American men in the United States
Rating: 
Summary: this book is lousy part 5
Review: Well, o' my brothers and sisters...we are back in the dungeon of poor writing. The iron maiden, the rack, the cat o' nine-tails in this instance happens to be a poorly written book by David Mura. It is bad in a peculiarly 90's way.It is overwritten. Instead of having sentences snap into place in a logical manner or having them invoke beauty and have resonance, they crawl. He doesn't grant the reader to power to arrive at the same conclusions that he does regarding race and culture. This should always arouse suspicion when an author doesn't trust you to think for yourself. So to compensate, he cites dubious sources, makes obscurantist political theories regarding what Rambo the movie means, and other tactics. And for research/background (snicker, snicker), he gases on about Claude Levi Strauss, Foucault and other faddish intellectual nonentities that find their fans among the cloistered impractical isolates in academia. He also follows the poor 90's fad of prefacing a chapter w/ a quote that while fashionable or odd, has nothing to do with the chapter it precedes. Also, let's be clear about Foucault and the rest of this bunch. Yes, they can be popular in France, but after all, aren't they nuts for Jerry Lewis there, too? I mean, when examined, isn't Foucault really just bastardized Freud/fraud & Nietzche? While Nietzche's theories may turn off many, they certainly look sane when held up against the adulation accorded this book by the literary equivalent of a captive audience. This book may mean a lot to you if you like several in other reviews talk about "nisei brother" providing "therapy" and so on. But if you like your books w/ a little more intellectual meat on them, then this is a poor choice. If you believe the huggy-feelie uncritical school of writing is good, you will love this book. However, if you think mediocrity is to be despised, if you think a person making a living as a poet should have sentences that aren't clunky and read well, if you think examining beliefs and discarding those which do not meet the challenge in the marketplace of ideas, if you think that coddling an author because of their race and historical injustices is immoral; then this is NOT your book. I am amazed that Mura can make claims about racism in the states and make favorable comparisons for japan when many of their movies feature sexism (see the Rapeman series), or Black Rapist Stereotypes, and some of their shops actually have signs actually forbidding Brazilians entry because 'they are thieves'. Why do other books mention this & Mura leave it out? It could that it debones his thesis-he is unappreciated in America & Japan is better for him-and thus, presents a danger. I always worry when those purporting to be intellectuals avoid pesky facts that derail their arguments. (I am proud to say some close-minded people didn't like my earlier reviews of this book.) Thank you for your time and I only wish Mura would reimburse me for having wasted mine.
Rating: 
Summary: Self Indulgence & identity politics..
Review: Where can you start? Trying to reconstruct what's wrong w/ this book is like trying to piece together the whys of an airplane crash. We have no black box to guide us... Still, a good place to start is self-pitying, narcissistic ramblings. Being Japanese, not being Japanese could be a useful device, since that is a major theme of this memoir...however, this joins R. Rodriguez (of arguments w/ my mexican father)in being an exercise in how he was hurt by not being white as a child and how alienated he is. This navel gazing is broken up here and there w/ an interesting word...but the other elements anchor it in its sentimentality and pithy "truths". Example: when japanese has conflict w/ father, Mura lords it over the reader how "some conflicts cross cultures" or something such-you don't say! He could've spared himself the trip over the ocean on that one & watched even a sitcom make this rather prosaic observation. Joan Didion can make herself part of a group of essays & feature her foibles her-inability to cope & migraines. Despite what some call her "freeway existentialism", she can make the reading compelling. Mura does no such thing. In arguments w/ his friends, family, wife he inevitably comes out as rather pompous if not cruel. Literary advice: you're going to be a jerk, be an interesting one. Sadly, Mura is some kind of leftist doctrinaire who has the de rigeur poor sense of aesthetics. His joke w/ the Colonel Sanders statue is neither funny nor particularly illuminating. He also finds prejudice waiting around every American corner like some boogey man. Did he ever stop & notice some of the things he deplores about America are actually more abundant in Japan? Sexism, racism, & so on. Rape Man is a popular tv show,in which agency is employed to teach uppity workplace women "their place" by sexual assualt. About thirty years ago, many countries adopted anti-discrimination laws which they have or haven't observed too well. Japan signed on only recently & a Brazilian recently got their Supreme court to rule on the anti-brazilian/keep out signs in a store. Other books on Japan cite how often rapist GI's are black...Mura makes no mention & saves his bile for the USA. Also, much is made of "faces like mine" in this book. Ok, you look alike in Japan, please move on & tell us something new. Mura also seems to explain every fact about himself through his ethnicity. He likes a writer because he's Japanese, is alienated from a writer because he's not. Also, he uses the fad of many academic books in nineties of using quotes from various sources & w/ varying degrees of relevance to preface a chapter. Pretentiousness reaches dangerous levels here. Example: "As I've uncovered complexities concerning race, feeling @ once more clear-headed & more baffled, as I speak of the issue of race and let my emotions show through, I find myself met more & more by blank stares,resentment,even anger." Oh he's "uncovered complexities", has he? Besides the clunky sentence-did he really have to use "race" twice in same sentence since it adds nothing in way of style to sentence?-isn't he really saying "look @ all the profound things I've told you"? We learn nothing new here. You can't go home again? Is this new? Many tales are not, it is only their form which is new but Mura doesn't get himself out of the way long enough for us to forget his droning @ us. The "inner story" never stands a chance. We too, adopt the "yeah, yeah, yeah" response his harangues instill in one Japanese girl in the book. It's a good thing Mura introduces his parents & their camp experiences...still, you get this sense that he is really milking this. How long can camps be raised as an issue anyway? (Maybe there should be a statute of limitations for stylistic devices or @ least some way of ensuring they didn't come out so hackneyed.) Not all Jews who write spend all their time talking about Treblinka...He mentions Roth as a fave author when Mura was teen...yet Roth has an unflinching view of himself & those around him in his fiction & nonfiction. Mura, citing one example where a Jewish boy calls him "Mura-slime", seems stuck in one note whine. The rich color of humanity evident in Roth, is here a thin gruel. Certain elements of his work betray his Americanness academicness. There is the infatuation w/ French writers of no depth-their refried Freud/Fraud, socialists, etc. This taste is usually cultivated in those who feel America to be a barbrous place of no intellectual distinction & that they-the readers of this pap-are living in a wilderness & only the "civilization" of these europeans can fend off the philistinism all around them. Even the French don't take this junk seriously anymore. His prose style is overly ornate. He also says "I feel" a lot. A better question: when doesn't he feel? Could've done w/out Sally Jesse Raphael moment of therapy w/ parents. Anyway, I may have spent too much time on this...like smashing a card house tearing down this weak book. I hope Accidental Asian is better than this...happy reading. k
Rating: 
Summary: A little bit bland, but still entertaining
Review: While reading this, I was caught between times where I wanted to put it down and other times where the writers experiences flowed on the paper. Some of his personal diary excerpts were very wordy and syrupy and a waste of space. At other times, through his personal recollections growing up, you had an idea of what it was like for him to grow up as a Sansei.
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