Feelings of desertedness and desertness permeate this 2001 Tiptree Award-winning tale about a second-generation daughter of an immigrant family on a Japanese rice farm in the arid midlands of Alberta. The Kappa Child is awesome. Where sisters show love through affective violence, where a mother protects her daughters with salt, where fragile friendships are cultivated in the dry pages of Little House on the Prairie, our protagonist's esteem is destroyed in self-defense and self-loathing. It's easy to see the literary conceit stamped all over this tale, but, like a cool, refreshing Japanese cucumber, the crisp genre elements snap that dusty conceit in half with juicy revelations about Japanese fairies, delusional psychology, and maybe a UFO abduction. Despite the literariness of it all--this is written by the Writer-in-Residence at the University of Alberta--the abuse, neglect, self-hate, and family trauma is all very SF. It's not quite that organic, so the cucumber erotica subgenre is yet to be filled--er, sated--er, fuck it, engorged. Feelings of desertedness and desertness permeate this 2001 Tiptree Award-winning tale about a second-generation daughter of an immigrant family on a Japanese rice farm in the arid midlands of Alberta. It starts with some silliness: A quirky driver in the midst of traffic chaos. Like its name suggests, this is a book that will inhabit you. Some over-the-top quirkiness. Maybe he was just an asshole and couldn't admit he was wrong. But then suddenly, I sink. You won't read this and walk away feeling shitty about being human. Comical, with chapter titles like, "Laura Ingalls Wanted to See a Papoose Something Awful" (188). Digitize! More Goto. This is a study of dysfunctional family dynamics from a second-gen immigrant's perspective. A quick preread glance through blurbs and review first lines hint at mystical pregnancy and an obsession with cucumbers. ... so we lived in the bitter halfway house of rural poverty (192). The family tiptoes around an abusive father, and Goto explores the impact of childhood on adulthood, the meaning of family, and finding one's own path in the world. From the award-winning author of Chorus of Mushrooms, which won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book in the Caribbean and Canadian Region and was co-winner of the Canada Japan Book Award, The Kappa Child is the tale of four Japanese Canadian sisters struggling to escape the bonds of a family and landscape as inhospitable as the sweltering prairie heat.In a family not at … So naturally, I expect cucumber sex. Drawing from Japanese folklore, Goto weaves a story of fantasical realism that draws at least somewhat from her own childhood in a Japanese Canadian immigrant family. All rooted to a father whose unchecked idiocy traps the entire family in paralyzing and helpless misery. It probably took me about 25 pages. Great book. The author raises many comparisons and contradictions between Japanese and Canadian culture. Dysfunction SF-ified. Like a briny sea, it's just too much quirkiness to sink below the surface. Maybe. Hiromi Goto’s The Kappa Child depicts the story of an unnamed narrator as she dreams her way through the hardships of domestic violence, racism, and sexual orientation while growing up in a homogenous prairie society. And here is where I shout into the digital cosmos: Reprint! The Kappa Child From the award–winning author of Chorus of Mushrooms , which won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book in the Caribbean and Canadian Region and was co–winner of the Canada Japan Book Award, The Kappa Child is the tale of four Japanese Canadian sisters struggling to escape the bonds of a family and landscape as inhospitable as the sweltering prairie heat. From the award-winning author of Chorus of Mushrooms, which won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book in the Caribbean and Canadian Region and was co-winner of the Canada Japan Book Award, The Kappa Child is the tale of four Japanese Canadian sisters struggling to escape the bonds of a family and landscape as inhospitable as the sweltering prairie heat. Honking horns, clanking shopping carts, CB static; a lotta onomatopoeia. Okasan says that books make for good companions, but they can't hug you back. It hasn't been since Babel-17 that I clambered onto the couch on a Saturday morning, just to read a few pages, and barely moved until I absolutely had to. That's true, but then, being family doesn't mean they can hug you either. In the Kappa Child, Hiromi Gotto describes her experience as an immigrant Japanese-Canadian. Weird, with nasal spray addictions and pajama wardrobes and sadness glands and bodily inhabitations, ("a strange sensation to have your ass kicked from the inside" [138]). So I think, aww man, this is going to be too cutesy for me. And to top it off, they aren't even good companions. Like the grassy green cover suggests, like the cucumber fixation hints, this is a fresh, verdant tale about dysfunction and re-generation. Maybe it was the ultimate challenge, the last immigrant frontier: to do the impossible in a hostile land. This can be seen in her comparisons between her journey and that of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s, for example in the part where the narrator reads to her sisters and draws the comparison between the … I don't think I'm going to like it. Consciousness of the act of reading keeps me afloat. Put it this way: A book will never ask for a hug you don't want to give (137). This protagonist is quirky, the quirky narrative wants us to know.