Strawberry Yellow by Naomi Hirahara
Review by Cheryl R. (Spuddie)
#5 Mas Arai series; protagonist: Mas Arai, 70=something Nisei (American born of Japanese immigrants) who is a gardener and lives in LA. Mas (short for Masao) went with his parents to live in Japan and he is a survivor of the Hiroshima bomb, after which he returned to his native California.
This series has become one of my favorites and I was very happy to see this newest entry published a short time ago after a break of several years. I always get a bit of culture shock at first getting inside Mas’ head because…well, because he’s not a white, middle aged Midwestern woman I guess. LOL What I mean to say is that the author does a wonderful job of making you believe from the inside out that Mas is who she says he is. J
In this book, Mas is off north to Watsonville (his hometown) for the funeral of his second cousin, Shigero “Shug” Arai. Being a bit of a loner and not one given to emotional displays, Mas really isn’t eager for all the nostalgia he feels seeing his old stomping grounds and friends from his youth and hopes to return quietly home after the funeral, having done his duty by attending. However, Minnie, Shug’s widow, corners him and tells him that she believes her husband was murdered. Unlike the humble Mas, who works in the dirt and drives an old beat up Ford pickup held together with duct tape and love, Shug was a college-educated man who became a famous strawberry breeder and his company was about to reveal a new strain of berry that was described as revolutionary, and immune to the yellowing disease that plagues strawberries from time to time.
When a young hakujin (white) woman who was having an affair with Shug’s son is found murdered soon after the funeral, Mas begins to wonder if the widow isn’t right and agrees to stick around for a day or two and see what he can discover. Besides, the police have told him they may have “more questions” for him, since he provided the alibi for their chief suspect, Shug’s son, so he’s not really free to leave anyway. Then his motel room is broken into and searched and the brake line on his truck is tampered with, and Mas gets deeper and deeper into tying together the old wounds of the past to present-day motives for revenge.
Poor Mas! He always ends up putting his foot in it, when he’d like nothing more than to do his work and live a quiet, peaceful life—a cold beer, a game of dice or cards with his friends now and then. He’s a delightful, well-fleshed character with a definite personality and each of these books have provided a focus on a different cultural facet of Japanese-American life that I have very much enjoyed learning about from the inside via Mas. Some people have said they didn’t like the sort of accented pidjin-English Mas speaks and thought it was demeaning. I personally thought it added flavor and seemed quite realistic and helped with the whole believability factor of the character. I very much look forward to the next installment in this series. I also have to admit that I will probably never look at those plastic clamshells full of red, ripe strawberries at the market in quite the same way again! Highly recommend this series, although it’s always better to start from the beginning with Summer of the Big Bachi. Enjoy!
