Books At Twelve Ten - Snapshots of University Village, once a Japanese Produce Farm

When three from the Books At Twelve Ten group met to discuss Snow Falling On Cedars last Tuesday, February 14th, we brought in separate texts. One had some basic questions, multiple choice. One emailed questions, for example: separate out individual story lines to explore how the novel might have worked with that story alone. Hatsue and Ishmael would have been Romeo and Juliet. I brought in In Defense of Our Neighbors: The Walt and Milly Woodward Story, about the editor of the Bainbridge Island newspaper that was the model for the island newspaper in the novel. It has an introduction by David Guterson. In another book, Sustainable Seattle, I found a reference to the presence before 1950 of a Japanese produce farm beneath what is now University Village, which is below the viaduct near the University campus on 45th. (Photos at U Village.)

"He's good at math." Two boys in Jumpstart, a cartoon, discussed this statement and whether it was stereotyping. They decided it was not. The question would have arisen, though, not from race but from No Child Left Behind. All children must complete the math skills the child has attained to graduate from high school. To suggest that the skills belong to an individual suggest that there is a group that has these skills, while others cannot attain them. From notes from a speech a few years back by Robert Moses at a Race and Pedagogy Conference, I pull up a point that it is a stereotype threat to believe that a student's ability is matched by the student's SAT.

One minor point I brought up was that the defendant did not really want to be a fisherman, but really wanted to be a strawberry farmer. Sometimes we assume that our wish reflects our ability. But he is still characterized as being a good fisherman. I think a topic Guteerson treats is that the internment was brought against people who were capable and skilled practical responsible neighbors. Our questions tell us Guterson raises questions for discussion without solving the questions completely.

We also discussed the evidence Ishmael found at the lighthouse. This is treated differently in the novel than it is in the movie. For me this evidence was a part of the novel that made me appreciate the novel more than the movie version. We had an interesting discussion. Sunday the newspaper featured an article about the Pierce County Reads book choice, Hotel at the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, by Jamie Ford, which is also on the topic of Japanese in the Puget Sound area in World War Two.