I tried to read Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen almost three years ago. I could not do it. Well since then I have realized the satirical nature of the book/story. I have seen both versions of Pride and Prejudice, the BBC 6 hour version and the 2005 version countless times. Well I decided to give it ago again and I have to say that I loved it. We know the story but while reading it I looked for Jane Austen’s wit and comedy in the story.
Potiki by Patricia Grace is a story of many stories and how all influence each other. To the euro-centric reader it is quite confusing. It is a Maori story of a young boy and the story of his village. Or it is the story of a villiage and it’s young boy. But does it really matter. The book is some what of a resistance against the westernization of the culture. Patricia Grace writes what the characters of the stories call for. The stories are a fight and a struggle as well as an observation as time moves on.
Koru- this is the spiral. it symbolizes how everything is connected to everything else.
Minus three pages I loved this book. Tosh is not the main character but I felt like he really was the main character. His younger brother narrates life as a Japaneses American in Hawaii right before WWII. The story is really a story of the battle for an identity. Tosh really struggles under his culture and under filial piety. To his parents he an awful disobedient and ungrateful child. To Tosh his parents are strict and backwards parents. Moving to a new land means that there are going to be changes in culture so why don’t they go along with it? Life really is different and how can you survive somewhere where you cant connect to? Tosh feels that it is not the male children responsibility to pay for his parents inadequacies and sins. To the children the parents just use their children to bring “honor” to their family. But what is this honor really. Its just being told to do what to do. They live on a plantation and work all day in the smothering heat and get paid little, not enough to survive.
Milton Murayama wrote other books to go along with this story. Even though “All I asking for Is My Body” was written first “Five Years on a Rock” was written as a prequel about the mother in “All I Asking for Is My Body”. Then After the story Milton wrote “Plantation Boy” which is pretty much the same story as “All I asking for Is My Body” but narrated by Tosh. Then he wrote “Dying in a Strange Land”.
If you liked Pride and Prejudice then you will like Mr. Darcy’s Diary by Amanda Grange. Ms. Grange takes the Austen’s most popular work and retells it from Mr. Darcy’s perspective. All the conversations and events are exactly the same but instead of the reader seeing the story through Elizabeth’s eyes they see it through Mr. Darcy’s. Elizabeth always tells the reader what she thinks of Mr. Darcy and she is wrong in the beginning. Are you not curious what Mr. Darcy really did think of Elizabeth in the beginning of the story. Amanda Grange writes an interesting and fun book to get the reader thinking a little more about the Austen novel.
