{"id":25621,"date":"2014-05-26T10:30:26","date_gmt":"2014-05-26T14:30:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/?p=25621"},"modified":"2014-05-26T09:58:06","modified_gmt":"2014-05-26T13:58:06","slug":"how-to-be-an-american-housewife-by-margaret-dilloway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/how-to-be-an-american-housewife-by-margaret-dilloway\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Be an American Housewife by Margaret Dilloway"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"How<\/a>Okay, I confess the\u00a0cover put me off from opening the book for months (well, actually, years); I recently compromised by choosing to go aural\u00a0and was surprisingly delighted\u00a0to spend almost eight hours with narrators Laural Merlington and Emily Durante (who take turns reading as mother and daughter); I must be totally mellowing in my old age because I only cringed a few times over the less-than-accurate Japanese pronunciation. While the novel might get labeled beach-read or chick-lit, How to Be\u00a0<\/em>has some serious heft, exploring and exposing\u00a0ethnic, cultural, generational, societal, gender, and religious disconnects\u00a0\u2013 yup, all that and more!<\/p>\n

Had World War II not decimated\u00a0her country, Shoko would have had a very different life. But with war came the American military, including Charlie who Shoko’s father chose for her to marry when she presented him with the photographs of all her potential suitors. She had already fallen in love with the wrong man, barely survived losing him, and she\u00a0needed to be practical.<\/p>\n

Half a century later, Shoko is living in California \u2013 as Charlie’s wife, she’s been an American more than twice as long as\u00a0she’s been Japanese.\u00a0Her son, Mike, is himself already middle-aged, although he’s back living at home. In contrast, her daughter Sue verges on too independent, a divorced single mother with whom Shoko\u00a0has a distanced relationship at best.<\/p>\n

Now Shoko’s heart is failing, and she needs to repair\u00a0the rifts in her past\u00a0before she runs out of time. Her younger sister has already passed away, and somehow Shoko\u00a0must find her older brother whom she has not seen or heard from since she left Japan. Physically unable to\u00a0go herself, she convinces Sue and her granddaughter Helena to go in her stead. The journey to the other side of the world becomes exactly what the entire family needs to heal ….<\/p>\n

According to her bio, Margaret Dilloway<\/a>\u00a0was inspired to write this, her first novel, by the experiences of her\u00a0own Japanese mother and her American father, and the real-life book he gave her when she became his\u00a0American housewife. That book \u2013 which\u00a0Dilloway features\u00a0on her\u00a0author site<\/a> \u2013\u00a0was The American Way of Housekeeping<\/em>, written in both Japanese and English; although her mother “didn’t use it,” said\u00a0her father, Dilloway herself “wonder[ed] how it had guided newly arrived brides. Eventually, the book served as the inspiration for [her] book-within-the-book,\u00a0How to Be an American Housewife.<\/em>”<\/p>\n

Dilloway begins each chapter with excerpts\u00a0from her faux housewife-handbook; as epigraphs, they serve as ironic (“[i]f your husband wanted to have an independent, working woman, he would have married an American”), disturbing (“[m]any men find that a small Japanese wife is an asset when she walks on his back after a long, tiring day”), tragic (“… understood without explanation or question that in the United States a Japanese person will not be considered equal”), even comical (“when a Japanese person begins consuming Western foods, they become fat”) counterpoints to the real life that Shoko and Charlie share over the decades.\u00a0That disconnect between well-intentioned advice and reality, cleverly captures the layered relationships between husband and wife, mother and daughter, and brother and sister. Easy-breezy reading it may be, but\u00a0How to Be an American Housewife<\/em>\u00a0is also a resonating treatise on how we learn to just be<\/em> with one another.<\/p>\n

Readers<\/strong>: Adult<\/p>\n

Published<\/strong>: 2010<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Okay, I confess the\u00a0cover put me off from opening the book for months (well, actually, years); I recently compromised by choosing to go aural\u00a0and was surprisingly delighted\u00a0to spend almost eight hours with narrators Laural Merlington and Emily Durante (who take turns reading as mother and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25588,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,81,6,197,76,426],"tags":[83,84,6608,59,75,3248,10,3249,51,123,25,2719,13,3250,145,129,45],"class_list":["post-25621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-adult-readers","category-audio","category-fiction","category-hapa","category-japanese","category-japanese-american","tag-assimilation","tag-betrayal","tag-bookdragon","tag-cultural-exploration","tag-death","tag-emily-durante","tag-family","tag-how-to-be-an-american-housewife","tag-identity","tag-illness","tag-immigration","tag-laural-merlington","tag-love","tag-margaret-dilloway","tag-mixed-race-issues","tag-mother-daughter-relationship","tag-war"],"yoast_head":"\nHow to Be an American Housewife by Margaret Dilloway - BookDragon<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/how-to-be-an-american-housewife-by-margaret-dilloway\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How to Be an American Housewife by Margaret Dilloway - BookDragon\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Okay, I confess the\u00a0cover put me off from opening the book for months (well, actually, years); I recently compromised by choosing to go aural\u00a0and was surprisingly delighted\u00a0to spend almost eight hours with narrators Laural Merlington and Emily Durante (who take turns reading as mother and...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/how-to-be-an-american-housewife-by-margaret-dilloway\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"BookDragon\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2014-05-26T14:30:26+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2014-05-26T13:58:06+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2014\/04\/How-to-Be-an-American-Housewife.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"954\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1438\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@SmithsonianAPA\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"How to Be an American Housewife by Margaret Dilloway - BookDragon","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/how-to-be-an-american-housewife-by-margaret-dilloway\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"How to Be an American Housewife by Margaret Dilloway - BookDragon","og_description":"Okay, I confess the\u00a0cover put me off from opening the book for months (well, actually, years); 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