Bento Box in the Heartland

Title: Bento Box in the Heartland: My Japanese Girlhood in Whitebread America

Author: Linda Furiya

Publication date: 2006

Book's setting: The 1960-70's

Random facts: I love reading about food more than anything else in the world. Fact.

Plot summary: Bento Box in the Heartland is Furiya's memoir of her childhood as the only ethnic family in small town Indiana. Despite being born in the United States she always felt torn between her parent's traditional Japanese home life and her very American school environment. The book goes through her childhood and is filled with heart-warming family stories and well as her confrontations with racism. Each chapter ends with a recipe for a Japanese meal.

Favorite aspects: This was just a gorgeous book. First and foremost it had me drooling. I don't often read candid memories of childhood but Furiya captured the thought process' of her younger self and wrote them shamelessly. Her irrational fears and the strange ways she viewed the world growing-up are honest and relatable. It was a book that was easy to inhabit. She described her trip to Japan and her first multicultural experience in Brooklyn so well it was almost as if I was there with her- tasting and seeing the world for the first time. I go gaga over a good memoir and this one was exceptional. Food is the basis of many cultures. That desire to cling onto cuisine above all else was portrayed in a truthful and amusing way.

Least favorite aspects: As a memoir I really can't debate the subject matter... and the writing was excellent and hysterical. I guess I don't have anything to criticize.

Other works it reminded me of: How My Parents Learned to Eat by Ina Friedman; In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson by Bette Bao Lord.

Sadie's merciless break-down: My African-American-Puerto-Rican cousins live in Queens. They live in an extremely Asian neighborhood filled with Koreans and Japanese. In Bento Box in the Heartland Furiya recalls being the only child in school with a Bento Box and the embarrassment she felt eating rice balls at lunch. My cousin Isabella is the only one without a Bento Box. So now my aunt has to put together complicated lunches for her daughters every morning. It's amazing the sort of peer pressure that cuisine can put upon someone.
Sometimes I feel like the only true connection I have to my Puetro Rican and German heritage is through eating. If I eat pernil and pasteles and schwartzwalder apfelkuchen and arroz con pollo and sauerbraten then BY GOLLY I AM GERMAN AND PUERTO RICAN! I don't know if it works that way (because let's face it, I'm an American) but it sure feels that way. In the cuisine that comforts me eating I feel a tiny bit of cultural pride.
Of course my life isn't anything as drastic as Linda Furiya's, but I think that anyone who has a heritage that they cling too will be able to identify with her. Food is about family. It's about shopping and eating together, about passing down recipes and sharing flavors. Family is heritage and heritage is culture. Bento Box in the Heartland is a sweet book and a delicious book. It left me hungry and happy.

Recommendation rate: If you've ever liked to eat than you should read it. (Just be prepared: you will have to go out for Japanese afterward.)