One woman's journey through the lack of Japanese tradition and food in the United States
Growing up Japanese in whitebread America was a difficult task for young Linda Furiya. Fortunately, she became a San Francisco Chronicle food critic and ended up writing about her experience.
Her new book, Bento Box in the Heartland: My Japanese Girlhood in Whitebread America, is filled with poignant memories and delicious traditional Japanese recipes. She records her memoirs in the way she knows best: through food. Whether it is her family’s need to find Japanese groceries for their recipes, to her hiding the traditional Japanese rice balls from her friends at school.
Since she was a child, Linda was a part of the only Japanese family in her neighborhood. Versailles, Indiana, did not have an Asian culture and she was always reminded of her glaring differences.
Kids at school would come to the cafeteria with their sandwiches and cookies, while Linda’s mother had lovingly prepared a bento box for her. She would be so ashamed of her heritage that she ended up eating the rice balls alone in a bathroom stall to avoid scrutiny.
It was a school friend who was reluctantly invited into the family home that Linda first realized how rich her culture was. Between her friend asking her mother countless questions about their knickknacks they had around the house and her mother bonding with her new friend, she became jealous and realized how little she knew about her parent’s past.
Through food, she learned about her culture and her family’s history. Her father had always eaten with gusto, appreciating his traditional Japanese meals more than anything else. Her mother cooked their meals with passion and took pride in feeding her family the food from back home in Japan.
Beautiful writing and the weaving of history, family stories and a mixing of cultures are all told through the pleasure of food. Tales of her dad’s WWII POW camps, her mother’s pain after her own mother died, and the homesickness that they all felt is illustrated through family meals at home.
Linda’s childhood trip to Tokyo, where she met her mother’s family for the first time, exposed her to the traditions that shape who she is. Each page is written with careful reflection, yet flows as if she experienced it all yesterday.
You can find Bento Box in the Heartland: My Japanese Girlhood in Whitebread America, at AMAZON.
Linda Furiya
Linda graduated from Purdue University, which led her to a short time in Washington, D.C. and then to San Diego, California. It was in San Francisco that she discovered writing and started her column, From Where I Stand. Moving to Beijing, China, led her to travel and food writing, and back to San Francisco where she wrote a food column for the San Francisco Chronicle. Before settling in Shelburn, Vermont, she continued writing in Shanghai, China and completed a culinary training program at Meilong Zheng cooking school that focused on Shanghainese cuisine.
