randomWalks

C'mon, Mr. Go Vegan, I'm sure you must have something to say... or at least explain what you liked about the characters' reactions to the acts of animal cruelty.

I thought Yamanaka did a good job of juggling two difficult tasks: she showed us a family suffering from the effects of poverty and racism in an environment unfamiliar to most of her readers. But she also made the book universal by writing about issues such as freedom and loss. In the end, I think Blu's Hanging turned out to be about the pain, and the necessity, of letting go. Maybe Yamanaka delivered too pat a resolution, but at least she only tried to resolve the more universal theme. It would have been worse if she had somehow tried to redeem the racism and abuse the characters suffered -- instead, she just let that be what it is, without sentimentalizing it. Going back and reading hcog's earlier comments, I guess the universal theme could be seen as a tactic to sell more copies of the book, but perhaps Yamanaka genuinely felt that those feelings and tensions were equally worth writing about. It's difficult to say.

Sometimes I felt the book was more poetic than novelistic, with its recurring lines (like the quotes from "Moon River"), metaphors (the rope that keeps you from going into dream-land), and some of Ivah's thoughts. Yamanaka let herself off the hook a bit by making it more poetic... I mean, the book doesn't have all that much of a plot, for example. But lyric poetry usually doesn't have a plot, either.

The only drawback of the poetic approach, I thought, was that sometimes Ivah said things that I don't really think a kid her age would say. I wish I had a copy of the book with me, but I don't, so I can't give an example. But my wife disagreed with me. I guess I don't know very many 13-year-old girls, so I'm no expert.

Back to work, but I'll write more later.