Seventeen Syllables.
The story of parallel lives, as we meet a Japanese immigrant mother, or Issei, and her Neisei daughter. The mother is passionately interested in the Japanese art of Haiku - poetry containing seventeen syllables - and her daughter does not understand this at all. Her mother goes on to win a Haiku contest herself, which alienates the girl's father, who is jealous and resentful of his wife's success. Neither parent understands their daughter's romance with a Mexican boy, as they would prefer she date within their ethnic group. The story highlights the enormous divide between Issei and Neisei generations, and also highlights the way in which Japanese women are second-class citizens within their own families.
The High-Heeled Shoes : A Memoir
This story has a first-person narrator who describes sexual harassment that she and her female friends have endured during their lives, including threats of rape. The story was written in 1948 yet it could easily be another testimony given by a member of today's Me Too movement.
The Legend of Miss Sasagawara.
During World War Two, Japanese people were mis-trusted within America, even Neisei whose loyalty was to their birth country and not to the country of their ancestors. Like the author and her family, Japanese immigrants were taken to relocation camps and this story takes place entirely in one of these camps. Miss Sasagawara is one of the women the narrator, an American-Japanese girl, encounters at the camp. She is believed to be completely insane but at the end of the story, a poem that she has written shows her to be anything but. She is repressed by her father, something that occurs a great deal in Japanese society, which at that time was entirely patriarchal.
The Brown House.
A husband who is addicted to gambling has an unwitting enabler in his wife who turns a blind eye to his downward spiral because she has been conditioned by society to believe that a wife's role is to support her husband no matter what he is doing and no matter how damaging it is to the family. Consequently his financial troubles bring downfall to the entire family but the wife believes she has done the correct thing by keeping these troubles from becoming obvious to anyone outside the home.
Wilshire Bus.
World War Two has ended, but there is still suspicion of the Asian community and in this story a young American Japanese narrator watches as an American harasses a Chinese couple riding the bus. The narrator feels a peculiar sense of self-satisfaction on witnessing this and realizes that the American is not the only one who has resentment towards another race or ethnic group. The story explores the question of relationships between divided cultures and ethnic populations.
Yoneko's Earthquake.
As in the title short story in the anthology, this story also has two parallel storylines, both observed and recounted by a Nisei girl named Yoneko who lives on her family's farm. A Filipino farm hand arrives and has an impact on Yoneko; she has quite a crush on him. Like mother, like daughter, as it turns out; Yoneko's mother takes her feelings a step further and embarks upon an affair with him. This story continues the themes begun in Seventeen Syllables especially the complex relationship between mother and daughter and the way in which ethnic groups interact with each other.
Morning Rain.
Almost more like a snapshot in time than a short story, this piece deals with a breakfast shared by an Issei father and his Nisei daughter. The daughter is married to an American man and cannot relate to her traditional Japanese father. She feels that he does not hear her - metaphorically. The story is almost entirely symbolic, as the father reveals to his daughter that he cannot hear her because he has become deaf. His physical deafness symbolizes the disconnect that is felt by the Issei and Nisei.
Epithalamium
Life Among the Oil Fields, A Memoir
This is not a short story per se, but a memoir, as the author describes living on a farm in Southern California, with her family. It is whilst they are living here that her brother Jim is hurt in a hit and run accident. The couple who are driving the car are eventually tracked down but they have no remorse whatsoever, and will not take responsibility for their actions. They do not even care enough about what they have done to ask about Jim's injuries, or how he is doing.
Las Vegas Charley.
Las Vegas Charley is actually an Issei man who immigrated to America before World War Two, getting married and starting a family, only to be uprooted at the start of the war and interned in a camp. After the war he headed west, settling in Las Vegas and working as a dishwasher. Despite his best efforts to improve his life, he remains exactly where he started.
The Eskimo Connection.
An Eskimo prison inmate and an Issei father forge an unlikely friendship through a prison pen-pal program. Despite their different circumstances and backgrounds, the men are a testimony to the principle of friendship.
My Father Can Beat Muhammed Ali.
An Issei father wants to impress his sons who are first generation Americans, and obsessed with American sports. He wants them to be more interested in Japanese sports, and this disconnect illustrates the gap between Japanese parents who want their children to act like Japanese, and their American children who feel that their parents are stuck in the past.
A Day in Little Tokyo.
A young Nisei girl agrees to go with her father and brother to watch Sumo wrestling, although she doesn't really want to. She is accidentally marooned in Little Tokyo, and watches the people who live there going about their daily business instead. This is another story that highlights the differences between Issei parents and Nisei children.
Underground Lady.
An American woman and an American Japanese woman both surprise themselves with their racial prejudice as they encounter each other and unwittingly reveal their uneasiness about each other. This story is primarily about the relationship between different ethnic groups.
