Chorus of Mushrooms: week five

Welcome to another instalment of Nikkei Book Club! This week, we're finishing up Part Two of Chorus of Mushrooms.

There's so much happening in Part Two that I hardly know where to start our discussion. The trip to the Oriental grocery store in Calgary? Naoe's fantastic adventures with Tengu? Her telling of the yamanba legend? Muriel's discovery of her family name? But I think what really pulls everything happening in the book right now together is the healing power of food: Muriel/Murasaki heals her mother by cooking tonkatsu for the whole family, while Naoe feasts on Chinese food, saying, "I eat for Murasaki. I eat for Keiko" (148). It's not just any food, either - both Murasaki and Naoe are reconnecting to long-lost food that brings them closer to their heritage. And Murasaki is learning about this food for the first time, through her mysterious psychic link to her grandmother. Meanwhile, "weiners and Cheese Whiz and left-over potato salad" (150) are getting dumped into the garbage. Where do the mushrooms of the Tonkatsu family's farm fit into this spectrum of food, eating, re-connection, and discarding?

Other things I'm thinking about:

Naoe says: "My Japanese eyes are at the back of my head, and they can only see backwards" (110). What does this mean? Would it be possible for this to change for her? How does this statement relate to Keiko and Murasaki?

More funny names in this section: if you didn't know the meaning of Tonkatsu, you do now, and there's also Tengu the truck driver, Naoe's new alias Purple, and Sushi the shop person. Any guesses as to what's going on here?

And some more interesting things about knowing and not knowing: Muriel doesn't know how to make tonkatsu, resorting to trial and error, and she doesn't know how to use chopsticks. But she tells Sushi that she "know[s] what the words mean" on her grandmother's shopping list, without having any idea what they are. And she knows what the mimikaki is on sight. Where is this knowledge coming from, and why is it only for some things and not others?

Can we talk about Shane Wu? Why is he included in Muriel's story?

I'll finish off with an announcement: the June-July book club read will be The Letter Opener by Kyo Maclear. This is a novel with a mystery at its heart: the main character Naiko is a young Japanese Canadian woman whose coworker Andrei suddenly vanishes. Make sure to get a hold of a copy for June!

-Carolyn