Where the Body Meets Memory

A third-generation Japanese American, Mura ascribes his promiscuousness, addiction to pornography and marital problems to race discrimination. In a jumble of diary excerpts, recollected conversations with his therapist, wife, friends and family, he muses on his parents' efforts to become mainstream Americans, the lasting effects of their humiliating internment during WWII and his own rebellion and rage against culture barriers. The husband of a white woman, Mura also discusses the destructive attitudes of white Americans towards interracial marriages. Although this frank account of his difficulties gives circumstantial evidence of the effects of racial discrimination on Japanese families and individuals, the link is somewhat weakened by the fact that many of the very problems he attributes to it--e.g., rebellion against parents, infidelity--are common in all groups; and the disordered nature of Mura's discourse lacks the impressive style of his acclaimed earlier work, Turning Japanese: Memoirs of a Sansei. (May)