Re-reading Recap Redux #1: Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

I may be starting a new series about the redux of rereads for books that happened before the blog came to the Internet. In the first post, we'll be talking about Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet.

My sisters and I have all read the text! My experience is that I already read it in high school, but specifically, it was junior year (2012-13) - just less than a year left to its establishment. Speaking of having to do the redux, there are bitter times, and there are sweet times. Some stuff could be remembered and others may tend to be forgotten. Some are at the same page as yesterday, and some are way ahead in time for the ending. Some ended up with many loose ends so bad, nobody even answers it after a long while. Some could contain a perfect moment to finish things up. Some do not need any sense like nothing happens, and some have an 100% actual plot. Some have full of angst and some are so sane, they like to be honest.

"In the opening pages of Jamie Ford's stunning debut novel, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, Henry Lee comes upon a crowd gathered outside the Panama Hotel, once the gateway to Seattle's Japantown. It has been boarded up for decades, but now the new owner has made an incredible discovery: the belongings of Japanese families, left when they were rounded up and sent to internment camps during World War II. As Henry looks on, the owner opens a Japanese parasol. 

This simple act takes old Henry Lee back to the 1940s, at the height of the war, when young Henry's world is a jumble of confusion and excitement, and to his father, who is obsessed with the war in China and having Henry grow up American. While 'scholarshipping' at the exclusive Rainier Elementary, where the white kids ignore him, Henry meets Keiko Okabe, a young Japanese American student. Amid the chaos of blackouts, curfews, and FBI raids, Henry and Keiko forge a bond of friendship - and innocent love - that transcends the long-standing prejudices of their Old World ancestors. And after Keiko and her family are swept up in the evacuations to the internment camps, she and Henry are left only with the hope that the war will end, and that their promise to each other will be kept. 

Forty years later, Henry Lee is certain that the parasol belonged to Keiko. In the hotel's dark dusty basement he begins looking for signs of the Okabe family's belongings and for a long-lost object whose value he cannot begin to measure. Now a widower, Henry is still trying to find his voice - words that might explain the actions of his nationalistic father; words that might bridge the gap between him and his modern, Chinese American son; words that might help him confront the choices he made many years ago. 

Set during one of the most conflicted and volatile times in American history, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet is an extraordinary story of commitment and enduring hope. In Henry and Keiko, Jamie Ford has created an unforgettable duo whose story teaches us of the power of forgiveness and the human heart."

I remember like it was yesteryear when we should've went to the play that was based on the book, luckily I haven't finished it yet until later in semester one. This book came out one week after Obama swore to office, and yet it happened the day after we buried the first grandpa in the same year (my dad's dad). I know this is one of the classics too recent for our timing, but the story itself took place one generation earlier (it was 1986 if you don't know) and then we went further back in time to "the war years" Henry called it. Although it took place a few years after the main events of The Boys in the Boat at the same city, but this time in another spot where the International District used to be Japantown that's four times the same size as Chinatown before the soldiers kidnapped the Japanese and took them to prison camps. Not only it was a love story, but it's about friendship and a coming-of-age story that is somewhat different than the usual, typical unknown type of awakenings you see in movies, shows and books.

When it comes to reading this book the first time, I already saw inspiration that happened to develop my main OC for a story of my own. As a result, it transformed into a fanfic that was published digitally nearly two years earlier that caused myself to put on permanent hiatus mode in the end. During the redux, I noticed another side which lead me to read Snow Falling on Cedars in order to wrap-up 2016 during my winter break, so I could settle down, spend time with family and just recover myself from so many pages I've read over the past few years of my entire life. Not only did the English class picked out the same book I already read in high school, but I really forced myself to read the whole entire thing again through for 30 pages per week in succession by the usual five sections: quotes, questions for discussions, illustrations, connecting the plot to life and vocabulary. At the end of this book, we ended up going on a field trip to the setting where the book took place for the 11am Wingluke Museum tour. We had Chinese food afterward.

If you read this book, I strongly recommend Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson - more of a love interracial story during the war years except instead of a Chinese, we got a white person.

Source:
www.goodreads.com