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| September 06, 2008 | |||||||||||||||
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 | The New Bedford Samurai by Anca Vlasopolos | Reviewed by R-Laurraine Tutihasi | |
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| Publisher: Twilight Times Books
http://www.twilighttimesbooks.com/ ISBN: 1931201927 Genre: Fiction Subgenre: Historical Release date: Sep 2007 Format: hardcover Pages: Price: $35 | |||
| This book is a mixture of fictionalized biography and essays about history and the environment. The book attracted me, because I remembered seeing a book titled Manjiro on my parents' bookshelves. I had a vague idea about who he was and was interested in learning more. This book fulfilled my curiosity about Manjiro. Unfortunately I found the author's essays rather jarring, because the writing style of the essays was so different from that used in the biographical portions. Sometimes these essays were in stand-alone chapters. Other times they were mixed in with the biography. I wouldn't say that the essays had no place in the book, but I felt the entire book could have been better organized.
Manjiro was a poor nineteeth century Japanese fisherman's son who ran from home rather than disappoint his parents one more time. He eventually became stranded on a rocky island with no fresh water along with some fishermen he'd run into. They were rescued by a whaling ship from New England and eventually taken to Hawaii. The ship captain decided to adopt Manjiro and took him back to Massachusetts with him. There Manjiro received an education in trades that were useful for that era. Eventually he returned to Japan, where he was not exactly welcomed. He spent the remainder of his life under suspicion, as he'd become "contaminated" by Western ideas. The author tries to tie in the biography with her views about the human despoiling of the environment, but I don't think it's done very well. Still I enjoyed reading the biography, which is written in a very readable style. I found the writing in the essay parts to be less readable. This is not because of my own views on the environment, which are in total agreement with hers. Overall I find the book to be good enough to recommend, at least as a biography. | |||
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