My favorite books read in 2016

When I’m reading in the middle of the day instead of doing chores or writing, I know I’m in a good book. Here are some of the titles not necessarily current:

A Little Life (read it twice)

Little Paris Bookshop (read it twice)

Hillbilly Elegy

Barkskin

Smilla’s Sense of Snow (read it twice)

Shakespeare Saved My Life

The Underground Railroad

The Bell Jar (had read this in my youth..enjoyed it differently this time).

Am rereading Magic Mountain by Mann because of a funny story attached to this book. I organized  a book club for residents in the condominium where I lived in Honolulu over a dozen years ago. I began with Winnie the Pooh and it was a great success with a math professor, a chemist, a fireman, a high school teacher, a marine biologist, a micro-biologist among others. Other children’s classics followed and discussions were heavy with philosophy and the intellect along with our inner child, until the micro-biologist began to complain and insisted on Magic Mountain for our following month’s selection. So we did. I read the book and appreciated the introduction to this book.  No one showed up at our next meeting except for the micro-biologist and that ended my book club.

Hey, anyone for the Magic Mountain?

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We Are Japanese and We Speak of Volcanos, Atomic Bombs and Earthquakes

This is a quote from a statement made yesterday by someone:

“The Japanese do not talk about earthquakes, volcanoes, etc….”

So here I am at the Volcano National Park, signing my book: Kapoho:

Memoir of a Modern Pompeii. I begin my stories with Pearl Harbor and end with the lava

destroying my home village, Kapoho.

Below, I’m holding Charles Pellegrino’s book: To Hell and Back: The Last Train from Hiroshima at Barnes and Noble. The voices of  the survivors of Hiroshima echo out of the pages. And yes, we are all Japanese, btw.

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Two Book Reviews with 10 stars

It’s been a long time since I came across two novels so riveting and binding. I consider The Last Samurai a work of genius and so, in my mind,  the author must be a genius, too. A story of a single mother and her 3 year old who searches for his father. Mother uses the film The Seven Samurai as a backdrop to become her son’s male role model.So I had a hard beginning: After a chapter, I emailed friends to get this book. After a few more pages, I sent out another email retracting my email. Then Red suggested I read it like a poem and am sooo glad I did. This is a  brand new copy and look what I did to it. I gobbled it up like my last supper.

On a Red-eye to NY recently,  I was the only one reading, couldn’t put down A Little Life. I met a young man in NY quite by accident and when he began to tell me his story, I told him to read A Little Life because he is one of the characters. “Read the book”, I told him, “and tell me which of the characters you are.” I bought and sent him the book. Four young boys attend college in NYC, they form a friendship that will make you weep. They each pursue their dreams but their journey is one that will touch all your senses and emotions.And leave you stunned and reflective.

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April: Poetry Month: Process of Writing

At our last poetry writing support group for caregivers, caregiver Bob shared the following poem:

 

I Began to Write

 

I began to write because I was angry.

I began to write because I was hurt.

I began to write because I needed to vent.

I began to write because Fran could not.

But along the way an epiphany.

I fell in love, I fell in love with words.

I find joy in finding the right word and

Like a jigsaw puzzle only one word will fit.

I love the richness and simplicity of the right word.

It has elegance and beauty in its own right.

I love the harmony of words together

With meaning greater than the sum of its parts.

I see stories unfolding to make you weep.

To laugh and move you to action.

This is the power of words.

©Bob Oyafuso

Bob confessed how he pondered over each word and of the time  spent
searching for  the right word. “It’ll take me 35 years to write a book,” he laughed. He explained so well the process of writing poetry.

Driving home, I thought of …
It took me years of reflecting and over six months of actual writing to write the following poem. When the episode happened, ( I was a young new teacher, I noticed a first grader missing…I panicked and went outside and saw him running across the playground with arms all out…running into the fog. I stood and watched him until he returned; he merely said “I couldn’t touch it.” We walked back to class without a word, my arms around his shoulders.)
I knew I had to capture it so I wrote a short story.
Somehow the story just didn’t do it. I wrote the story in various forms and finally settled on the following:

Run, Run, But Not Into the Fog

A little boy
Runs into the fog
As it slowly creeps
Over the field,
Softening edges
Into mists.
He runs and runs
And soon is swallowed
By the mysterious giant.
Then slowly, quietly
He returns to me
With wooden legs
And puddled wings.
“The more I ran
The more it disappeared.”

from The path of Butterflies.

No one ever said writing is easy.

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The Three Year Swim Club by Julie Checkoway

This review is from: The Three-Year Swim Club: The Untold Story of Maui’s Sugar Ditch Kids and Their Quest for Olympic Glory (Hardcover)

The amazing part of this review is, author Checkoway emailed me to thank me for my review and we have even made plans to meet in Sacramento. I can’t believe this. I’m still flying high. To members of my book club, shall we select this book for our next round of titles and I assure you, I will invite the author to  join us over our monthly dinner.

Here’s my review:

I sent this email to all my nieces and nephews and to their children:
I highly recommend this book to all of you.
I see why my publisher recommended this book to me. I feel we all need to read this to see how it was with the Japanese Americans way before you and I were born. I also think people born on Maui ought to read this book, along with the non-Maui born residents, so they will appreciate and honor the history of that place.

It’s about Soichi Sakamoto, swimming coach who trained plantation kids to go national by letting them swim and practice in the ditches on Maui. Interestingly, I grew up with his name Sakamoto, Keo Nakama, and others mentioned in this book, yet they were in their prime before I was born so they had become legends by the time I could read. Then the story continues after Pearl Harbor. This is a touching part of our history if you are Japanese from Hawaii, Okinawan, Haole( Caucasian), or  just a human being. I’m sure you’re one of these…ha.
Sakamoto ended up at UH as swimming coach. Won’t tell you if his dream of sending one of the kids from the ditches to the Olympics ever became a reality.

In the book, the author mentions how people were named by their character. One swimmer was called Halo Hirose…pronounced hallow because sometimes he seemed to act as though his brain was filled with too much space.
Reminded me of how my own village Kapoho folks were also called. Our Uncle Jun was called Pe-lute, a Filipino word meaning throwing up from drinking too much. One man was called ke-sha…train in Japanese because his teeth protruded like the front of a train and these became permanent names. So one doesn’t have to be from Hawaii or from Maui to be able to find one’s own history in the story.

At the end, one is left with this feeling that one’s own humanity to another is still, why we are here.

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The Japanese Lover

 

Thank you Isabel Allende, noted writer whose work is all on my book shelf. Her most current book, The Japanese Lover, was a page turner. There was only one section that led me to write to Ms. Allende. Here is the email sent to her agent:

 

Please inform Ms. Allende of one error stated in her book.
She stated that the Japanese Americans weren’t interned in Hawaii. Our neighbor was taken away in the middle of night.MPs searched our homes for all things Japanese. There were internment camps on Maui and Oahu and many were shipped off to camps on the mainland. I have helped to translate and publish a collection of their poetry written in Japanese in these camps. So for her second printing, she may want to make this correction.
Thank you for your attention.
frances kakugawa

 

The following day, I heard from Ms. Allende:

 

Dear Francés

Thank you for pointing out my error in The Japanese Lover. I will tell the publisher.

Warmly

Isabel Allende

 

Dear Isabel,
I have not been able to get my feet back to the ground after receiving your email. Thank you so much for accepting my input. I have bought The Japanese Lover for my publisher and other friends after being so impressed with your story. I will add your email to show off our correspondence.

Frances

 

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Open Letter to Stephen King

Dear Mr. King,

If you hate readers who sneak to the ending of your books first, you gotta hate me. I’ve echoed so many times that if a writer wants you to read the ending first, he or she would have placed it in the beginning or right in the middle.

But…but…it’s not due to my lack of respect for you as a writer, it’s because you have so artfully crafted your stories with such suspense and intrigue that I just had to skip to the ending.
I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t sleep, worried if the characters who became so real, would still be alive in the morning.

So what I’m saying is, it’s really your fault that with each of the books I’ve read these past three weeks, I had to cheat and find out the ending hundreds of pages prior to the end. Mr. Mercedes and Finders Keepers were spellbinding. As was Christine.
Your On Writing, a must read for everyone, made me feel we are now friends but will restrain from calling you Stephen.

Now, you have started on the next book, haven’t you, and you won’t be turning me into a Morris Bellamy, or would you?

Cheers Stephen…I mean Mr. King.

a devoted fan

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Basically Books Memoir Panel

Here are some photos, courtesy of my niece, Tammy, from the Writing the Hawaii Memoir panel discussion I was in a couple weeks ago.

Nice to see how well the store supports local authors! Here is the section with all my books:

And this is our esteemed panel of authors, all contributors to Writing the Hawaii Memoir by Darien Gee, with Basically Books shop owner, Christine Reed (center).

From left to right: Mark Panek, Darien Gee (author of Writing the Hawaii Memoir), Christine Reed (Basically Books), me and Leslie Lang.

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“Dear Frances…” Hawaii Herald Column (June 20, 2014)

Here is an excerpt from my “Dear Frances…” column in the Hawaii Herald newspaper from last month. For my newest column every month, be sure to get your copy of the Hawaii Herald by subscribing.

Dear Frances,

I’m taking care of my mother, who has Alzheimer’s. My sister and brother live out of town and criticize many of the things I do when they come to visit. How can I get them to understand and help me out?

Sally
Honolulu

Dear Sally,

I find this common among many families, so I’m going to address this to out-of-town siblings: Become a pillar of support. This means, do not give advice to or judge the primary caregiver. Their job is all consuming and they are doing the best they can.

Unless you live with the person being cared for, you will not know what caregiving encompasses. Telephone conversations with loved ones reveal very little because of social graces. My mother had a standard conversation:

Okasan: “Hello . . .”
Caller: “Long time no see. How are you?”
Okasan: “Oh, I’m fine.”

This conversation did not give a clue as to where she was in the stages of the disease, nor the demands being made of the caregiver. Asking questions requiring very little memory tells us hardly anything about the state of their dementia. For example:

Caller: “Did you have breakfast?”
Loved one: “Yes.”
Caller: “How are you doing?”
Loved one: “Good.”
Caller: “What are you going to do today?”
Loved one: “Oh, not much.”

Do not judge so easily that the caregiver is exaggerating because the loved one sounds so normal on the telephone. To find out what’s really going on, spend a few weeks, or even months, with your loved one without the primary caregiver in the house. Find out for yourself by taking on the role of primary caregiver.

Before visiting, please check to see what dates are best for your loved one and his or her caregiver. There are schedules and appointments and unless you are able to take care of these, your visit needs to be coordinated with the caregiver — not made at your convenience. We need to respect the world created by the caregiver and the loved one.

If you are unable to become an active caregiver, there are many other ways you can help. Ask the caregiver about:

• Finances: Contribute your share of expenses.
• Household: Pay for someone to do house cleaning or to take care of the yard.
• Carpentry: Work to make the house safe and Alzheimer’s-friendly.
• Express and show gratitude: For example, give gift cards for restaurants, massages, manicures, etc.
• Join a support group to learn about the disease and the demands it places on the caregiver so that you will have a better understanding of the situation. Educate yourself about the disease and its symptoms so that you will be able to converse on the same wavelength.

This is now addressed to you, the caregiver: Be honest when you are offered help. Asking for help does not mean that you are not the perfect caregiver. We often feel that others will not be able to give care like we do because of the structure and schedule we have established.

I often felt that it was too much of a bother to explain to someone else how to give care to my mother because she was so used to me. There are many ways of giving care, as long as no one is hurt or mistreated. When a sibling helps with caregiving, try to get out of the house; ideally, take a vacation when they’re visiting. Write out the schedule for your siblings to follow, as change will confuse the one being cared for. A list with the following information will help:

• Physician’s name, office phone number (cell, if available) and address
• Names and phone numbers of people who may have to be called upon in the event of a crisis (plumber, electrician, medical personnel, neighbors, friends, etc.)
• Shower/bath time
• Meal times
• Outings
• Favorite foods, TV shows, music and activities.

Both primary and out-of-town caregivers: Not everyone is cut out to be a caregiver, so be honest if you feel that you cannot handle the demands of being a caregiver and give help in other ways.

Aloha,
Frances

Dear Frances,

My husband was just diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. I’m at a loss, and I’m scared. I know there is so much mis-information. Where do I begin to obtain good information? What kinds of meds? How do I make our house Alzheimer’s friendly?

Roberta
Hilo

Dear Roberta,

Whoa! One day at a time. One need at a time. We need to progress with his needs as the disease follow its course; otherwise, we will be overwhelmed and frozen with stress.

To begin with, your husband’s neurologist is the best source for all of your medical questions.

For information: Put together a list of your concerns and visit the Alzheimer’s Association office in your community. They can direct you to the right resources. If you cannot get through the neighbor island numbers listed below, call the Honolulu office for information.

Hawai‘i Alzheimer’s Association Contact Numbers

Maui: (808) 242-8636
Hilo: (808) 981-2111
Kaua‘i: (808) 245-3200
O‘ahu: (808) 591-2771

The National Alzheimer’s Association contact number and website are: 1-800-272-3900, www.alz.org. Call them for help.

Another good source is the Eldercare Locator, which you can reach by calling 1-800-677-1116, or visiting www.eldercare.gov. Eldercare Locator helps families find resources and services in their own community (home care, adult day care and nursing homes). Eldercare Locator is a public service of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration on Aging.

If there are support groups in your area, consider joining one, for it is here that you will not feel alone. You will learn how others are resolving some of the same problems you are facing. When I joined a support group at the Alzheimer’s Association, there were caregivers with loved ones at all stages of the diseases. That gave me insight into what to expect on a general level. I say “general” because there are individual differences in how this disease affects each person. Caregivers are very creative and these support groups are filled with them.

Most of the Alzheimer’s Association offices have a library. Here are some book titles that may be helpful:

• On Alzheimer’s disease: The A to Z of Alzheimer’s Disease by Carol Turkington and Deborah Mitchell
• On caregiving: The 36-Hour Day by Nancy L. Mace and Peter V. Rabins; and my books, Mosaic Moon and Breaking the Silence
• On Alzheimer’s and children: Getting to Know Ruben Plotnick by Roz Rosenbluth, and my book, Wordsworth Dances the Waltz
• On legal issues: Long-term Care: How to Plan & Pay for It by Joseph L. Matthews

The local libraries probably have these books on their shelves, too.

Remember: Take a deep breath . . . one day at a time.

Aloha,
Frances

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Takashi Tanemori in San Francisco

Tanemori-San,

It was an honor to meet you for the first time after our numerous emails. When I saw you standing elegantly in your kimono, I felt embraced by my own Japanese heritage. As you shared your stories of Hiroshima, of that exact moment the bomb was dropped, of you, a young child, looking out the window of your classroom, peeping through the fingers of both your hands spread over your eyes, I thought of my own ancestors.

 

You brought into that room yesterday, all my ancestors who were demolished in the bomb and I’m believing, perhaps they are smiling today, because two sets of courageous grandparents made a decision to leave their homeland to migrate to Hawaii’s plantation life to preserve our family tree.

 

Your stories of total forgiveness of man’s inhumanity to man, is truly the path to follow if we hope to live in peace and harmony. Thank you, Tanemori-San, for using your suffering to teach us about compassion and human kindness through forgiveness and for sharing the uncontaminated “ki” that lives inside of you. I look forward to seeing your art display in San Francisco during the months of August-September to commemorate the 70^th Anniversary of Hiroshima.

Hiroshima: Bridge to Forgiveness by Takashi Tanemori

 

 

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