{"title":"Milton Murayama","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"all-i-m-asking-for-is-my-body-book-milton-murayama-9780824811723","title":"All I'm Asking for Is My Body","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eFrom the Afterword by Franklin S. Odo:\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e The most important feature of Milton Murayama's brilliant \u003ci\u003eAll I Asking for Is My Body\u003c\/i\u003e is the quality of the storytelling. It deserves thorough discussion and criticism among literary professionals and students. The work has a further genius, however, in its evocation of several major topics in modern Hawaiian history, specifically during the 1930s, the decade before United States involvement in World War II. I suggest that Murayama's novel provides us with valuable insights into the worlds of language, sugar plantation history, and the second-generation Japanese Americans, the \u003ci\u003enisei.\u003c\/i\u003e . . . Critic Rob Wilson noted: \"Part of the accomplishment of the novel is that the language ranges from the vernacular to the literate and standard, and so reflects the cultural and linguistic diversity of Hawaii.\" In the novel, Murayama uses standard English and pidgin. In real life, the narrator Kiyo explains, \"we spoke four languages: good English in school, pidgin English among ourselves, good or pidgin Japanese to our parents and the other old folks.\" The wonder is that Murayama emerged using any one of the languages well. For most, that experience proved to be an insuperable barrier to good creative writing. . . . \u003ci\u003eAll I Asking for Is My Body\u003c\/i\u003e is the most compelling work done on the Hawaii \u003ci\u003enisei\u003c\/i\u003e experience. Murayama understood his theme to be \"the Japanese family system vs. individualism, the plantation system vs. individualism. And so the environments of the family and the plantation are inseparable from the theme.\" Fortunately for us as readers, however, he understood that the story was the key ingredient; that anything less would simply add to the sociological study of the plantation and the Japanese family in Hawaii.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49940545470737,"sku":"CIN0824811720VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ LIKE_NEW \/ SBYB","offer_id":50205973250321,"sku":"CIN0824811720LN","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":50289986044177,"sku":"CIN0824811720A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51008861470993,"sku":"NIN9780824811723","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51885149913361,"sku":"GOR011810750","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52105397993745,"sku":"CIN0824811720G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52130168242449,"sku":"NLS9780824811723","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0824811720.jpg?v=1762598581"},{"product_id":"plantation-boy-book-milton-murayama-9780824820077","title":"Plantation Boy","description":"This text presents a broad view of the nisei experience in Hawaii. Toshio narrates the continuing story of the Oyama family. Outspoken, proud, determined and passionate, Tosh is the voice of the rebel that Japanese authority seeks to silence, as he fights against his family's poverty.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49955714990353,"sku":"CIN082482007XVG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50238868128017,"sku":"CIN082482007XG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/082482007X.jpg?v=1786134061"},{"product_id":"dying-in-a-strange-land-book-milton-murayama-9780824831974","title":"Dying in a Strange Land","description":"After her husband sinks them deep in debt, strong-willed and pragmatic Sawa takes charge of the family. The war ends and her children leave the plantation camp for Honolulu and the Mainland, but Sawa has little time for loneliness or regret.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50238864097553,"sku":"CIN0824831977G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51327344345361,"sku":"CIN0824831977VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0824831977.jpg?v=1786135792"},{"product_id":"five-years-on-a-rock-book-milton-murayama-9780824816773","title":"Five Years on a Rock","description":"Milton Murayama returns to the places and people of his earlier fiction - to the sugar plantation company towns and sleepy villages of Maui, and to the resilient Oyama family. Five Years on a Rock is the story of Sawa Oyama, the mother who plays a major role in All I Asking for Is My Body. In a spirited voice full of courage and wit, Sawa tells of her arrival in Hawaii in 1915 as a seventeen-year-old picture bride. But her hope of returning to Japan after five years on a rock wanes as the five years stretch to twenty, during which six children are born, her husband's fishing business succeeds then fails, and the family debt grows. Overworked and sick with worry, Sawa loses all her teeth and falls deathly ill, the victim, she believes, of someone else's bachi (divine retribution). She recovers, however, when an aunt dies in her stead, and she returns to her family with renewed vigor and a new set of teeth.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50363856519441,"sku":"CIN0824816773G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51008420577553,"sku":"NIN9780824816773","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51330660139281,"sku":"CIN0824816773VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52130807742737,"sku":"NLS9780824816773","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0824816773.jpg?v=1786614405"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/collections\/author-books-by-milton-murayama.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}