“They are real friends. She just didn’t fit in.”
I knew in my heart that my mother was right. I knew that I was being a coward. I knew that the right thing to do, the kind thing to do, would have been to be Miho’s friend. But Miho and I being Japanese together would have doomed us both, and I was afraid of testing my friends, of not fitting in myself. My fear was greater than my compassion, and I sacrificed Miho to that fear.
Who can face that about themselves in eighth grade, when we are all made of fear? I couldn’t. So even though I felt guilty when Miho went away, mostly I felt relieved to be free of the reminder of how I feared the way others might see me.
HINT
This guy comes up to me at a frat party. We talk. He’s cute. He’s attentive. He says, “Eriko. Is that Japanese?”
I say, “Yes.”
He says, “I wondered if maybe you were Japanese.”
I say, “Why?”
He says, “You have a hint of an accent.”
I say, “No I don’t. Unless it’s a Minnesohhta accent.” I hit the O hard, the way only a true Minnesotan can.
He says, “No, it’s a Japanese accent.”
BON-ODORI
It was the summer of camp and Starbucks. We went into town for Obon, the festival of the dead, when we welcome our ancestors home. I wore a yukata and wooden geta that my grandmother had bought just for me. As we walked, the geta rang out against the concrete, karin-korin, karin-korin. The sun had set, and the streets were lit with lanterns and lined with vendors hawking toys, grilled meat, and sweets. Hundreds of people danced in a slow, happy procession around a central dais to the sound of the tankō-bushi song blaring from the loudspeakers. Up on the platform, men playing taiko and shamisen accompanied the singer.
My grandmother taught me the words and helped me learn the steps:
Hotte, hotte, mata hotte!
Katsuide, katsuide atomodori!
It was a dance about mining for coal under the moon; dancers mimed digging, then swinging a sackful of coal over their shoulder, putting it in a cart, and letting it go. I moved my hands left, then right, clapped them together, swept them wide. I took four steps forward, then two steps back, two forward, then one back again.
We bought hanabi to take home with us, and crouched on the street in front of the house and watched the tiny balls of orange fire spark and snap at the ends of the rice straws that we held in our hands. My grandmother served us glasses of barley tea and sent us inside to bathe and go to bed.
I could feel the tradition in my bones. When I close my eyes, can feel it still.
WHERE ARE YOU REALLY FROM?
I am from golden acres of wheat and cornfields, from towering mountain ranges and suburban subdivisions, from long, snaking rivers and ten thousand lakes. I am from political arguments with my dad at the diner. I am from long afternoons with my friends at the beach. This is my country. This is my birthright. This, despite what anyone says or thinks, despite my own doubts and fears and worries, is where I’m from.
I am from bright green squares of rice fields, from towns and cities chockablock with buildings, from glittering bays and busy harbors. I am from my grandfather’s favorite soba shop, the one that’s been there for a hundred years. I am from trips to the public bath with my mother. Japan is the land of my ancestors. This is where Miho was from. This is where my parents are from. This, despite what anyone says or thinks, despite all I’ve done to push myself away, is also where I’m from.
“Where are you really from?”
I know what people mean when they ask that question, and I can’t—I won’t—answer it the way they want, because “Japan” is not the truth. But “Minneapolis” is not the truth, either. All I can do is to ask back, “Where are you really from?”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Misa Sugiura is the author of It’s Not Like It’s a Secret, winner of the 2018 APALA Literature Award for Young Adult Literature, and This Time Will Be Different, a 2019 Junior Library Guild selection and YALSA Best Books nominee. Her work has also appeared in the New York Times. Misa lives in California under a giant oak tree with her husband, two sons, two cats, and a gray-banded king snake named Pumpkin.
SALVATION AND THE SEA
Lilliam Rivera
It was Leticia’s idea. She got caught up watching the nineties movie Thelma & Louise on Netflix, over and over again. She especially replayed the part when Brad Pitt wasn’t Brad Pitt but just a shirtless, fine, no-name cowboy who smashed Thelma. Leticia laughed whenever he spoke a line in the movie, giggling like she knew he wasn’t that smart. Not me. I thought the movie was boring, dated, stuck in this strange space where the actresses tried to be all badass. It didn’t feel real. Thelma and Louise shot up a guy, robbed a store, and put a cop in the trunk of his own patrol car, and all the while a detective tried his best to get them to surrender. They didn’t get shot once. If you are white, even in a movie, you can get away with a lot.
Leticia didn’t care. The minute the last scene of the two woman holding hands appeared on the screen, Leticia would start the film again.
“This film is so nineties,” I said. “And so dumb.”
“The nineties are back. Don’t you know, stupid?” She grabbed my bottle of Coke and took a large sip from it.
Leticia wore a bandana around her neck. She rolled up her T-shirt to look more like Susan Sarandon, not that it worked. Leticia’s thick, long black hair had absolutely no curl. She even thought of dying her
