I wanted to like this book, but nothing in it quite worked for me.

It's an issue book that didn't satisfactorily deal with the issues. Like, it's pretty didactic but not very explicit. I just wanted one character to make the distinction between ethnicity and nationality (seriously, if everyone thought about those as two separate things, the whole book would be different). There are bits that dealt with this in interesting ways (the Chongs are the best example), but most of it is just Sue or Andy insisting that they are Japanese/Chinese/American.

Also, I hate when food is "translated" into English/American. I can never understand the "translations" (aka fish paste) and it makes me feel like an outsider when I'm reading about my own culture.*

And the yakuza subplot is ridiculous. 

The characters all sound the same (there are several phrases recycled throughout the book), and there's a lot of similarities between this book and Namioka's other books particularly the Yang Family series. All in all, I'd say skip this one in favor of reading those or her historical fiction.

*It took me 20+ years to realize that bean curd is tofu.

I thought I would enjoy this book more than Ties That Bind, Ties that Break, but that wasn't the case. I wouldn't say I enjoyed it less, I just didn't enjoy it as much as I thought I would.

It's still a good book.

There's a lot of racism that is probably correct for the time. There's a lot about American Indians in the book, including the belief that they have red skin. Everything is shown to be false, but some of it felt unnecessary to the story. There are also a few racial slurs in the book (Ch*nk, Ch*nam*n). Just in case you're sensitive to things like that.

I enjoyed this book, but I had to skip all descriptions of foot binding (there were a few places where it seemed like it was being mentioned, so I just skipped ahead a page). I also didn't like the historical note. It mentions "African women" (which women in Africa?) who undergo body modifications that don't seem on par with foot binding. Also, wearing high high heels isn't really comparable to having bound feet.

Other than that, I mostly enjoyed the story, and I'm looking forward to the companion novel more.

This book was very unsubtle at times, but only at the beginning. With the rest of the book to balance it out, the beginning felt more true than it did as I was reading it. There's a case of pretty blatant racism, but sometimes racism is really blatant in real life.

Unfortunately I found all the characters unlikeable. I couldn't pinpoint any of their motives, all of which seemed different from what Namioka was telling me in the story (eg I got big fetishizing vibes from Steve).

I enjoyed parts of the book, especially the bits that examine what it is to be Chinese American, but on the whole I could have done without it.

Here's another book I read and liked as a kid. This one stands up to rereading though. I love that the cat isn't some noble beast, but is irked at his humble monk companion.

Aki Sogabe's illustrations are beautiful as always.