{"id":45738,"date":"2019-08-13T12:33:09","date_gmt":"2019-08-13T16:33:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/?p=45738"},"modified":"2019-08-12T20:45:10","modified_gmt":"2019-08-13T00:45:10","slug":"five-more-to-go-yoko-ogawas-the-memory-police-in-the-booklist-reader","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/five-more-to-go-yoko-ogawas-the-memory-police-in-the-booklist-reader\/","title":{"rendered":"Five More to Go: Yoko Ogawa’s The Memory Police [in The Booklist Reader]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The Memory Police<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0by Yoko Ogawa and translated by Stephen Snyder<\/p>\n

Without names, these people, this island, could be anyone, anywhere. As fantastical as the premise of her latest anglophoned novel seems, Yoko Ogawa (The Housekeeper and the Professor<\/em><\/a>, 2009) intends exactly that universality.\u00a0Initially, small things disappeared \u2013 \u201cRibbon, bell, emerald, stamp.\u201d What didn\u2019t just vanish was destroyed. And then people disappeared \u2013 those able to remember were removed by the Memory Police to ensure community uniformity.<\/p>\n

A novelist, whose mother was a sculptor with secret-filled drawers, her father an ornithologist, lives alone while writing her latest book about a voiceless woman. When her editor reveals that his memories remain intact, the novelist immediately recognizes the danger. The novelist works with her trusted childhood nurse\u2019s husband, now a daring duo, to build a hidden refuge in the novelist\u2019s house. Then books disappear, the rest are burned; the single library, too. And still, the disappearing doesn\u2019t stop. Ogawa\u2019s anointed translator, Stephen Snyder, adroitly captures the quiet control with which Ogawa gently unfurls her ominously surreal and Orwellian narrative.<\/p>\n

Dystopic literature is hardly new, but given the barrage of anxiety-inducing headlines, threatening predictions, and unsure future politics, perhaps that sense of unsettling fear is finding increased literary outlets around the world. In addition to Ogawa\u2019s latest, you\u2019ll find five more titles\u00a0from authors of Asian backgrounds who have chimerically, unforgettably captured global discontent on the page.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"The Emissary<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0by Yoko Tawada and translated by Margaret Mitsutani<\/p>\n

Japanese-born, Germany-based Tawada writes facilely in both languages and creates incomparable award-winning fiction that defies easy labels. Her latest literary, linguistic m\u00e9lange \u2013 smoothly rendered in English by Margaret Mitsutani \u2013 blends fairy tale, dystopian warning, peculiar mystery, cultural critique, and multigenerational family saga. Yoshiro and Mumei are a symbiotically bonded duo who are a century apart in age. At almost 108, Yoshiro\u2019s reason for (still) living is Mumei, his daughter\u2019s son\u2019s son \u2013 to get him up, dressed, mandarin-juiced, out the door to school. In this alternate future, everything \u2013 soil, sky, oceans \u2013 is potentially poisoned, most animals have disappeared, and even the children face extinction. And yet despite his seemingly truncated prognosis, Mumei\u2019s outlook remains full of insight and charm.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"An Ocean of Minutes<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0by Thea Lim<\/p>\n

In 1981, Frank is about to fall victim to a deadly worldwide flu pandemic. In exchange for Frank\u2019s recovery, girlfriend Polly time travels 12 years into the future and commits to 32 months of bonded servitude. Their 1993 reunion plan goes awry when Polly lands in 1998 with no means of contacting Frank. The United States of America is now the United States\u00a0and<\/em>\u00a0America; in this surreal fin de si\u00e8cle, Polly is trapped in a Kafkaesque labyrinth still plagued with socioeconomic inequity, racism, and violence. Despite such a dismal future, will some semblance of love survive?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"On Such a Full Sea<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0by Chang-rae Lee<\/p>\n

Once revealed in context, this book\u2019s title alone is an astonishing feat of encapsulated genius. Control, individuality, nature, perfection, reality, society \u2013 all that and more fill this dystopic treatise about a not-so-futuristic, ruined America. At the beginning, 16-year-old Fan simply walks out of her contained labor colony in search of her vanished lover. Her epic quest takes her through the renegade \u201ccounties\u201d and into a privileged \u201cCharter\u201d community and beyond. \u201cNew Chinese\u201d descendants trade gated protection by providing halcyon Charter cities with their necessities; beyond the walls lies a lawless free-for-all. Lee\u2019s use of a never-named \u201cwe\u201d to tell the tale proves to be a brilliant maneuver that allows him to be an observant bystander, discretionary judge, and at times, even an admittedly unreliable narrator.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"Severance<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0by Ling Ma<\/p>\n

Candace Chen arrives in New York City postcollege because \u201cit seemed like the inevitable, default place to go.\u201d She eventually settles into a Brooklyn apartment, finds a free-spirited boyfriend, and five years pass. Then Shen Fever hits, rapidly spreading gruesome death across the globe. Candace inexplicably remains immune while the city empties. On the final day of her work contract, she commandeers a yellow cab as far as Pennsylvania, where she becomes the ninth \u2013 and last \u2013 member of a motley crew who might be the only survivors. Their destination: \u201cthe Facility.\u201d The end looms but Candace is, well, just beginning. Ma\u2019s debut is a smart, searing expos\u00e9 on the perils of consumerism, Google overload, and millennial malaise.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"United States of Japan<\/strong>\u00a0by Peter Tieryas<\/a><\/p>\n

In Tieryas\u2019s disturbing new world, the Japanese didn\u2019t just invade Pearl Harbor, they attacked the mainland, too \u2013 and won. After releasing the imprisoned Japanese Americans from War Relocation Authority Centers, the Japanese victors take control of the western half of the continent. In 1948, Ruth Ishimura and Ezekiel Song are expecting a baby when they return to an unrecognizable, bombed-out Los Angeles. Four decades later, their son, Beniko, has nearly failed out of Berkeley Military Academy for Game Studies. He\u2019s best known \u2013 lauded, but feared \u2013 for turning in his own parents for betraying the omnipotent Emperor. And then Agent Akiko Tsukino shows up with news about serious threats to the USJ, involving a new video game called the\u00a0United States of America.\u00a0<\/em>A rebel group called the George Washingtons \u2013 complete with oversized white wigs \u2013 just might be plotting a new quest for freedom. Let the games play on!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Published<\/strong>: “Five More to Go: Yoko Ogawa\u2019s THE MEMORY POLICE,” The Booklist Reader<\/em>, August 13, 2019<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Memory Police\u00a0by Yoko Ogawa and translated by Stephen Snyder Without names, these people, this island, could be anyone, anywhere. As fantastical as the premise of her latest anglophoned novel seems, Yoko Ogawa (The Housekeeper and the Professor, 2009) intends exactly that universality.\u00a0Initially, small things…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":45739,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,21,6,76,37,38,7243,6535,66],"tags":[84,6608,6668,7235,842,49,7666,10,11,135,7857,13,3356,8456,8101,843,39,6867,8540,35,244,8102,8574,245,2509],"class_list":["post-45738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-adult-readers","category-chinese-american","category-fiction","category-japanese","category-korean","category-korean-american","category-lists","category-repost","category-translation","tag-betrayal","tag-bookdragon","tag-booklist","tag-booklist-reader","tag-chang-rae-lee","tag-dystopia","tag-emissary","tag-family","tag-friendship","tag-grandparents","tag-ling-ma","tag-love","tag-margaret-mitsutani","tag-memory-police","tag-ocean-of-minutes","tag-on-such-a-full-sea","tag-parent-child-relationship","tag-peter-tieryas","tag-severance","tag-speculative-fantasy","tag-stephen-snyder","tag-thea-lim","tag-united-states-of-japan","tag-yoko-ogawa","tag-yoko-tawada"],"yoast_head":"\nFive More to Go: Yoko Ogawa's The Memory Police [in The Booklist Reader] - 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\/five-more-to-go-yoko-ogawas-the-memory-police-in-the-booklist-reader\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Five More to Go: Yoko Ogawa's The Memory Police [in The Booklist Reader] - BookDragon\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Memory Police\u00a0by Yoko Ogawa and translated by Stephen Snyder Without names, these people, this island, could be anyone, anywhere. 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