I Would Meet You Anywhere: A Memoir: Machete
Autor Susan Kiyo Itoen Limba Engleză Paperback – 4 noi 2023
A Library Journal best memoir of 2023 • Finalist, National Book Critics Circle Award in Autobiography Growing up with adoptive nisei parents, Susan Kiyo Ito knew only that her birth mother was Japanese American and her father white. But finding and meeting her birth mother in her early twenties was only the beginning of her search for answers, history, and identity. Though the two share a physical likeness, an affinity for ice cream, and a relationship that sometimes even feels familial, there is an ever-present tension between them, as a decades-long tug-of-war pits her birth mother’s desire for anonymity against Ito’s need to know her origins, to see and be seen. Along the way, Ito grapples with her own reproductive choices, the legacy of the Japanese American incarceration experience during World War II, and the true meaning of family. An account of love, what it’s like to feel neither here nor there, and one writer’s quest for the missing pieces that might make her feel whole, I Would Meet You Anywhere is the stirring culmination of Ito’s decision to embrace her right to know and tell her own story.
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Specificații
ISBN-13: 9780814258835
ISBN-10: 0814258832
Pagini: 262
Ilustrații: 1 b&w image
Dimensiuni: 140 x 216 x 23 mm
Greutate: 0.27 kg
Editura: Ohio State University Press
Colecția Mad Creek Books
Seria Machete
ISBN-10: 0814258832
Pagini: 262
Ilustrații: 1 b&w image
Dimensiuni: 140 x 216 x 23 mm
Greutate: 0.27 kg
Editura: Ohio State University Press
Colecția Mad Creek Books
Seria Machete
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Recenzii
“I Would Meet You Anywhere is breathtaking. Like a master quilter, Ito is able to find the patterns and fit them together in a beautiful, cohesive story that’s balanced and satisfying, working in tandem to create a blanket of meaning enshrouding an entire life, plus some.” —Donna Edwards, Associated Press
“Unguarded [and] penetrating … [Ito] finally claims her identity, her truth, her rallying cry of ‘I exist.’” —Terry Hong, Booklist
“In this reflective and courageous memoir, Susan Kiyo Ito writes with heart and candor about her experiences as a biracial adoptee to nisei parents.” —Karla J. Strand, Ms.
“An intimate, deftly told story illuminating adoption’s complications and losses, I Would Meet You Anywhere is sure to move anyone who has ever felt rootless, questioned their place within their family, or longed for deeper self-understanding.” —Nicole Chung, author of A Living Remedy
“Susan Kiyo Ito is like a surgeon operating on herself. She is delicate, precise, and at times cutting with her words. But it is all in service of her own healing and to encourage us all to be brave enough to do the same in our own stories.” —W. Kamau Bell, author of Do the Work! An Antiracist Activity Book
“In the intimate pages of I Would Meet You Anywhere, Ito yearns to learn of her parentage within the confounding context of closed adoption. As Ito plots a path to locate and know the birth parent who forsook her, we experience the pain of diminishing the self in order to be seen. An exquisite memoir of mothering and daughtering amid racial and generational differences.” —Julie Lythcott-Haims, author of Real American: A Memoir
“My heart waxed and waned as I witnessed Ito navigate fraught interactions with her biological mother. This deeply moving memoir grapples with where the biological family fits amid a cacophony of secrets and longing all too often faced by adoptees.” —Angela Tucker, author of “You Should Be Grateful”: Stories of Race, Identity, and Transracial Adoption
"At times heartbreaking, infuriating, and validating, I Would Meet You Anywhere is a searing memoir … serv[ing] as a stark reminder that we all deserve to be free, whether that means giving ourselves permission to share our stories, being able to choose and access reproductive healthcare, or fighting against all forms of family separation." —Kayla Kuo, Soapberry Review
Notă biografică
Susan Kiyo Ito is the coeditor of the literary anthology A Ghost at Heart’s Edge: Stories and Poems of Adoption. Her work has appeared in numerous literary magazines and anthologies. A MacDowell Fellow, she has also been awarded residencies at the Mesa Refuge, Hedgebrook, and Blue Mountain Center. She has performed her solo show, The Ice Cream Gene, around the US and adapted Untold Stories: Life, Love, and Reproduction for the theater. She writes and teaches in the Bay Area.
Extras
My clogs squeaked in the snow as I approached the Holiday Inn in an unfamiliar, wintery city. I searched the lobby for an Asian woman but didn't see one. Was she already here? Was she going to show up as planned? Or had she bailed on me, reenacting the ghosting of two decades ago? The note in my pocket just said, "Holiday Inn, noon on Saturday, room under the name NOGUCHI." I sidled into the restroom to brush my hair and practice making a cheerful/intelligent/sensitive/mature face in the mirror. At twenty years old, I was still sometimes mistaken for a middle schooler. Suddenly, my outfit of jeans, mock turtleneck, sweater, and chunky clogs seemed wrong. Too casual? Too college student? I was a college student. But maybe I should have dressed up more.
"Hi," I said to my reflection. "Hello. I'm Susan. Hello!" I arranged my face into a variety of expressions: smiling, solemn, in between. I pushed back a tsunami of anxious tears. Then it was
time.
I walked through the lobby to the hotel's front desk and spoke her surname. Our name. My original name from the papers my adoptive parents had wrangled out of a county clerk only months ago. Noguchi.
"Room 1211. She's expecting you," said the red-haired clerk with a badly knotted tie. He pointed toward a bank of elevators.
The doors pinged open on the twelfth floor, and I edged slowly down the hallway. I paused in front of each door. 1207. 1209. I stopped in front of 1211. My watch read 11:58. I brushed the fake wood laminate door with my knuckles. Time ticked like a tiny bomb on my wrist. Two minutes to twelve. One hundred and twenty seconds. I stood with my palm against the door, watching the hand sweep its way around once, twice, a little blade slicing away at the time. I recited a little rhyme in my head. I would meet you in a house. I would meet you with a mouse. I would meet you in a room. I'd meet you at exactly noon. At five seconds to twelve, my hand curled into a loose fist and knocked twice. Then I stepped back, breathing hard.
The door opened. I half expected a blinding light and that I would step over the threshold into an abyss. But on the other side was an ordinary hotel room, and a Japanese woman my height stood in the doorway.
She was my birth mother.
I took in her ink-black hair, razor straight, with a sharp line of bangs above her eyebrows. No pin curls or foam rollers for her, no beauty-parlor perms like my adoptive mother. My heart pinched, thinking about that mother, oblivious back in New Jersey. I blinked and stared again at the soft rounded blip of her nose, her full lips. Her face, her rounded cheeks, looked familiar. She wasn't smiling.
Her eyes took me in. They moved over me, head to toe, quickly, expressionless. Then she spoke. "You must be Susan." Her voice sounded professional.
"Yes."
She stepped aside to let me pass. "I hope you don't mind that we've met here."
"Oh, no. Not at all." A giggle bubbled up from my gut and once again, my mind rhymed. I would meet you in a car. I would sit inside a jar. I would meet you—anywhere.
I scanned the room. Two double beds with gold quilted spreads. Suddenly, I was exhausted. I wanted to lie down. I wondered if we might take a nap, side by side. Two rounded chairs like parentheses perched next to the huge glass windows.
"Let's sit by the window," she said.
I awkwardly pushed the chairs together, then apart, trying to arrange them so that the sun, shining through the white winter sky, wouldn't glare in either of our faces. For a moment, I considered heaving myself against the glass, flying through shards of window into the swirling snow.
Finally, we sat facing each other. I chewed my lip. "I don't know what to say," I murmured.
"Neither do I." Her voice was cold. It wasn't a "me too" comment of solidarity. It was more like, then why are we wasting our time here?
I shrank into my chair. She hates me.
I fiddled with my envelope of photos and papers, my show and tell. "You probably would like to know how . . . how I found you."
"Hi," I said to my reflection. "Hello. I'm Susan. Hello!" I arranged my face into a variety of expressions: smiling, solemn, in between. I pushed back a tsunami of anxious tears. Then it was
time.
I walked through the lobby to the hotel's front desk and spoke her surname. Our name. My original name from the papers my adoptive parents had wrangled out of a county clerk only months ago. Noguchi.
"Room 1211. She's expecting you," said the red-haired clerk with a badly knotted tie. He pointed toward a bank of elevators.
The doors pinged open on the twelfth floor, and I edged slowly down the hallway. I paused in front of each door. 1207. 1209. I stopped in front of 1211. My watch read 11:58. I brushed the fake wood laminate door with my knuckles. Time ticked like a tiny bomb on my wrist. Two minutes to twelve. One hundred and twenty seconds. I stood with my palm against the door, watching the hand sweep its way around once, twice, a little blade slicing away at the time. I recited a little rhyme in my head. I would meet you in a house. I would meet you with a mouse. I would meet you in a room. I'd meet you at exactly noon. At five seconds to twelve, my hand curled into a loose fist and knocked twice. Then I stepped back, breathing hard.
The door opened. I half expected a blinding light and that I would step over the threshold into an abyss. But on the other side was an ordinary hotel room, and a Japanese woman my height stood in the doorway.
She was my birth mother.
I took in her ink-black hair, razor straight, with a sharp line of bangs above her eyebrows. No pin curls or foam rollers for her, no beauty-parlor perms like my adoptive mother. My heart pinched, thinking about that mother, oblivious back in New Jersey. I blinked and stared again at the soft rounded blip of her nose, her full lips. Her face, her rounded cheeks, looked familiar. She wasn't smiling.
Her eyes took me in. They moved over me, head to toe, quickly, expressionless. Then she spoke. "You must be Susan." Her voice sounded professional.
"Yes."
She stepped aside to let me pass. "I hope you don't mind that we've met here."
"Oh, no. Not at all." A giggle bubbled up from my gut and once again, my mind rhymed. I would meet you in a car. I would sit inside a jar. I would meet you—anywhere.
I scanned the room. Two double beds with gold quilted spreads. Suddenly, I was exhausted. I wanted to lie down. I wondered if we might take a nap, side by side. Two rounded chairs like parentheses perched next to the huge glass windows.
"Let's sit by the window," she said.
I awkwardly pushed the chairs together, then apart, trying to arrange them so that the sun, shining through the white winter sky, wouldn't glare in either of our faces. For a moment, I considered heaving myself against the glass, flying through shards of window into the swirling snow.
Finally, we sat facing each other. I chewed my lip. "I don't know what to say," I murmured.
"Neither do I." Her voice was cold. It wasn't a "me too" comment of solidarity. It was more like, then why are we wasting our time here?
I shrank into my chair. She hates me.
I fiddled with my envelope of photos and papers, my show and tell. "You probably would like to know how . . . how I found you."
Cuprins
PART 1 I Would Meet You Anywhere Go for Broke The Place I Came From Not a Japanese Girl Searching One of These Things Is Not Like the Other What Do You Need? A Small Crime What I Did Over Spring Break I Would Meet You at the Holiday Inn PART 2 Your Mother Is Very Nice The Mouse Room Totaled Lucky I Would Meet You in a Hospital Long-Lost Daughter Just a Bee Sting Dairy Queen I Would Meet You at a Wedding Origami Undertow Guest Room Separation Like a Heartbeat PART 3 A Small Hole Spit I Would Meet You at the Ferry Building I Had an Aunt Got OBC? Look at the Baby The Most Japanese Person in the Family Epilogue
Descriere
A memoir of one Japanese American adoptee’s experiences with her birth mother, love, family, and identity.