Julie Shigekuni’s first novel’A Bridge Between Us’(Anchor Books, 1995) is a haunting novel that follows four generations of Japanese-American women as they negotiate the intimate forces that embrace and tear at their family. What is remarkable in this book is that it is unflinching in its portrayal of these women’s ability to be cruel and narcissistic while not loosing site of their fierce love for each other. Perhaps it is Shigekuni’s poetic language that allows the reader to sympathize with each character, even when their actions are simply mean or misguided.
The Characters are(in order of generation): Reiko, a first generation Japanese-American woman who is incapable of seeing past her own experiences to care for her daughter Rio; Rio whose love of her Granddaughter, Nomi, offers her a lightness that combats the darkness she inherited from Reiko; Tomoe, daughter-in-law of Reiko and mother of Nomi, whose pragmatic approach to life holds the family together, and; Nomi, Tomoe’s daughter, who must move between these strong women in her family and find her own identity as a young American woman.
The book is narrated in these four women’s voices, each in turn telling their story, which is also the story of the other women. At another level, this novel begins to address the question of what it means to have ones identity shaped not just by family, but by the passing of time and the experience of becoming American.
Word has it that Julie Shigekuni’s new novel, ’In The Time Of Invisible Gardens’ will be published by Saint Martins Press(New York) in the Spring of 2003.