Banana Yoshimoto (née Yoshimoto Mahoko) is every bit as enigmatic as her pen name (chosen for her love of banana flowers, and for the sake of being intentionally androgynous). Though she comes from a famous family — her father is a well-known poet; her sister a manga artist — she is very guarded about her private life. Nevertheless, she's enjoyed a long and fruitful literary career (no pun intended) that started with her debut novel, Kitchen (1988), which (not unlike Lispector's auspicious beginnings as "Hurricane Clarice") occasioned a phenomenon known as "Bananamania" in her native Japan, where the book's gone through more than sixty printings. Beyond her own shores, Kitchen has been translated in thirty countries, and in 1993, when it first appeared in an English translation, the Japanese Foreign Minister handed out copies to the press covering the summit, seeing it as a book that could speak to youth worldwide.
Kitchen is frequently paired with "Moonlight Shadow," a novella Yoshimoto published the year before her debut. Both books center on young female characters dealing with loss: in the latter, Satsuki loses her boyfriend in an automobile accident; in the former, Mikage struggles with the loss of her grandmother, which leads her into new domestic situations. As the title suggests, Mikage's grief is mitigated by her love of all things culinary. What we find here is a sort of pop existentialism, and interestingly enough, during a time when anti-Japanese sentiment was at its height in the US, Yoshimoto's characters are obsessed with American culture (as was the author herself, who first found inspiration in the non-horror work of Stephen King). At its heart, Kitchen takes inspiration from universal sorrows while demonstrating how an author's unique perspective can conjure up new conclusions.
Here's how we'll make our way through Yoshimoto:
- Fri. October 20: Kitchen, "Kitchen"
- Mon. October 23: Kitchen, "Full Moon"
- Wed. October 25: "Moonlight Shadow"
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