Brazil-Maru

by Karen Tei Yamashita

Book Overview

From Japanese-American writer Yamashita: a story of Japanese emigration set, like her first novel ( Through the Arc of the Rain Forest , 1990), in Brazil. A range of characters, male and female, tell about a particular group of Japanese who emigrated to Brazil in the first decades of this century. Christian, well-educated, and reasonably affluent, they sought to establish communities where Christian and Japanese values could flourish. The group prospered,...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1566890160
• ISBN13: 9781566890168
• Release Date: September 1993
• Publisher: Coffee House Press
• Length: 248 Pages
• Weight: 0.82 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.5" x 9.0"
• Age Range: 16 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 11 and higher

Customer Reviews

wonderful heartbreaking story

This is one of the most wonderful stories I have read in a very long time. It deals with around 70 years of history of a japanese farming community in Brazil, beginning with the birth of the community, its demise and finally the integration of the younger generation as well as their attempts to connect to a homeland that doesn't really exist. The story is told through several characters: Ichiro, who comes to Brazil as a young boy and witnesses the birth of the colony, only to find out that his dream has been shred to pieces by the same man that made him believe in it in the first place, Haru, who we see grow from the beauty of the colony to an old resourceful grandma that endures all of her husband's infidelities, Kantaro, who at the beginning appears to be a dreamer but at the end turns out to destroy everyone's lives (with a mother and a daughter, Kimi and Akiko being the victims with the most heartbreaking stories), Genji, Kantaro's nephew who grows up in the commune but fails to adapt to life in Post-War Brazil and finally Guilherme, a second generation japanese who is and feels brazilian. Read it now!

Good historical fiction

"Brazil-Maru" is the story of a Japanese colony in the countryside of Sao Paulo State throughout the twentieth century. Although the locations and ideas are real, the story itself is not. "Brazil-Maru" is an interesting book with living characters and is a good "fictional" account of the lives of Japanese immigrants to Brazil in this past century.