{"id":7396,"date":"2017-04-30T13:20:47","date_gmt":"2017-04-30T17:20:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/najc.ca\/?p=7396"},"modified":"2018-01-17T15:05:42","modified_gmt":"2018-01-17T20:05:42","slug":"reviews-opinions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/najc.ca\/reviews-opinions\/","title":{"rendered":"Reviews & Opinions"},"content":{"rendered":"

– The Gilded Years by Karin Tanabe
\nWashington Square Press, 387 pages, 2016
\n– Loving, a film by Jeff Nichols, 2016<\/strong><\/h3>\n

\"The<\/a>by David Fujino<\/p>\n

On the day I reached Chapter 18 of this 32-chapter novel, The Gilded Years<\/em>, I had to put it down \u2014 not because it was boring and bad; and not because I didn\u2019t want to find out how Anita Hemming\u2019s life turned out. That\u2019s not it.<\/p>\n

This story of race and class really struck home. It made me think how growing up Japanese Canadian is thrust upon us. No one chooses to be born a person of colour, just as no white person chooses to be born white, but our society \u2014 with its pervasive sense of privilege and white superiority \u2014 tells us every day who you should look like, where you should live, and most damagingly, encourages us to think thoughts like, \u2018I\u2019m better than you.\u2019<\/p>\n

In The Gilded Years<\/em>, we read that Anita Hemmings had always aspired to attend one of America\u2019s most exclusive colleges for women, Vassar College. She wanted a better life. (\u201cThe world was kinder to the educated, and kindest of all to whites \u2014 and she knew that in a way almost no Negroes ever would.\u201d ) With her olive complexion and dark-haired beauty, this bright
\nthird year student in the class of 1897 decides to \u2018pass\u2019 as white, though she\u2019s the daughter of an African American janitor and a descendent of slaves. If this were ever discovered, she\u2019d be banned from the college. Now in her final year at Vassar, Anita finds herself unexpectedly rooming with Louise \u201cLottie\u201d Taylor, the boisterous daughter of one of New York\u2019s wealthiest and socially prominent families. And when Lottie becomes infatuated with Anita\u2019s light-skinned brother Frederick, who maintains strict control over who Anita socializes with \u2014 lest their closely guarded secret is ever found out \u2014 the siblings have a painful private discussion in which Anita says to Frederick: \u201cYou are allowed to have your own identity. I have to create mine.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Gilded Years<\/em> is a compelling work of historical fiction by Karin Tanabe, herself a proud graduate of Vassar. When author Tanabe came across a copy of the 2001 Vassar College alumni magazine with its cover photo of the beautiful Anita Hemmings, it sparked her curiosity and her desire to know more about the life and career of this first African American graduate of Vassar. It\u2019s a fact that Vassar \u2014 if you don\u2019t count Anita Hemmings or her daughter, Ellen Love \u2014 did not graduate an African American student until 1944, and was the last of the Seven Sisters women\u2019s colleges to do so. (The Seven Sisters are Radcliffe, Wellesley, Mount Holyoke, Bryn Mawr, Smith, Barnard, and Vassar.)<\/p>\n

And now, with the recent screening of the excellent Jeff Nichol\u2019s docudrama, Loving<\/em>, the issue of miscegenation (the mixing of the races) rears its head again. By all accounts, Richard Loving and Mildred Jeeter simply loved each other. They were not outspoken, they were not political people, and they weren\u2019t propagandists. They were in love and wanted to be married. Somehow, they struggled through Virginia\u2019s anti-miscegenation laws for a period of over 10 years, from their initial arrest to taking their case to the Supreme Court in Washington, DC, where they altered the Constitution in 1967. The demure Mildred was likely the \u2018mouthpiece\u2019 of the two, but the film focuses more on the resilience of their domestic relationship amidst the swirling legal battles and politics that surrounded them. The white Richard Loving is beautifully played by the actor Joel Edgerton who disappears thoroughly into his character and barely speaks more than twelve words in the film. Ruth Negga, through understated loving glances, effectively portrays Mildred Loving\u2019s true and direct nature. There\u2019s not a lot of talking in this film.<\/p>\n

These two pieces of historical fiction \u2014 Karin Tanabe\u2019s book, The Gilded Years<\/em>, and Jeff Nichols\u2019 film, Loving<\/em> \u2014 have made me re-examine myself and the society we live in. I\u2019m writing as a sansei entering his \u2018golden years\u2019, but I increasingly feel my concerns about race and JC identity mostly belong to the Issei-Nisei-Sansei line of generational thinking.<\/p>\n

Mind you, I\u2019m not saying racism and race and class are no longer relevant. And I\u2019m not saying we\u2019re living in a post-racial society. Not at all. I see that racism and race and class battles are unfortunately alive and doing well.<\/p>\n

But what I\u2019ve noticed is that the JC community is increasingly represented by the yonsei, gosei, happa, and the children of the ijusha, and they frequently don\u2019t focus as much on race and mixed race matters in the same way as older nisei and sansei do; they\u2019re usually mixed race themselves and are, frankly, beautiful, and in enough cases they have a healthy appreciation of their bloodlines, especially if they\u2019ve absorbed the life stories of their parents and grandparents; and they\u2019re often involved in the fight for human rights and gender equality. Think about it. The \u2018younger ones\u2019 have a different perspective \u2014 they\u2019ve grown up in a \u2018multicultural\u2019 society \u2014 and we elders should start recognizing and respecting this. Our generations have changed; and we have to talk more, and be patient with each other.<\/p>\n

(By the way, I did read The Gilded Years<\/em> in its entirety and recommend it highly.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

– The Gilded Years by Karin Tanabe Washington Square Press, 387 pages, 2016 – Loving, a film by Jeff Nichols, 2016 by David Fujino On the day I reached Chapter 18 of this 32-chapter novel, The Gilded Years, I had to put it down \u2014 not because it was boring and bad; and not because […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7398,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/najc.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7396"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/najc.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/najc.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/najc.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/najc.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7396"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/najc.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7396\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/najc.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/najc.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/najc.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/najc.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}