10th Book Round Up & 11th Book Pick

From Yuko Tsushima’s Territory of Light to The Coin by Yasmin Zaher

On a scorching June night, with Claudia in Montreal, we met on Florencia’s grand balcony to discuss Yuko Tsushima’s Territory of Light. Familial obligations precluded Meaghan and Evita from joining us in person but they were on Zoom alongside Dani, Emilie, and Anabela. Elizabeth sent her regrets as she loved the book.

(Every time I type out the names of the people who joined us on our meeting round-ups, a deep sense of joy and comfort joins me.)

Territory of Light was published from 1978 to 1979 in the Japanese literary magazine Gunzō as 12 stories that were compiled into a novel shortly after. The book’s protagonist is also an unnamed narrator mother like our first three books: Little Labours, Dept of Speculation, and Nightbitch. Although she is refered to as Fujino-san, after her husband throughout the story. It was translated in 2018 by Geraldine Harcourt, who has translated almost all her books including Woman Running in the Mountains, which Anabela highly recommended.

Claudia began with asking Anabela what she loved about Tsushima’s Territory of Light, because she named her substack after it, and suggested we read it. The pithy paraphrase is: everything. Anabela gave us a comprehensive entry into Tsushima’s oeuvre, the novel, and how Tsushima’s books often present an insular world of intense mother-child relationships. While Anabela spoke, it seemed like some of us were figuring out how situate ourselves in the interactions between the mom and her daughter, and the despair, joy, loneliness, and exhaustion that is mothering.

I read the book twice. Once for book club, and the second time for its grammar. The simplicity of its sentence structure reminded me of Chekov’s short story, The Lady with the Dog.¹

Evita’s laptop died, and lacking a cable, her final words were a text to me: “Yes, I agree, the sentence structure!”

We took a long time discussing motherhood in the 1970s, coming off Honeyman Festival, and how little guidance outside the heteronormative values there was for mothers; which probably led to leaving sleeping babies home alone, like and unlike Vern in Sorrowland. I went on a deep Reddit dive and it seems like many people won’t even go outside to garden while their baby naps unless they have a monitor (!). Our narrator would get drunk at the bar next door while her toddler slept.

How acceptable were these habits that some would see as abuse and neglect? Although I am ambivalent about judging mothers that have little alternatives (see the final paragraph of this post).

Anabela highlighted Tsushima’s acknowledgment of the potential negative consequences of such behavior, citing a chapter that detailed a child playing with a lighter and setting the house on fire while left alone.

Silly moms before the crew logged on.

The protagonist evoked a wide spectrum of reactions.

Claudia reminded us that “To disagree is book club!”

Daniela felt it was ultimately a sad story. Meaghan was frustrated with how immature the protagonist was. It was grating to watch her make the same mistakes over and over without learning from them: like snapping at her daughter then not going to find her when she ran away until much later. Evita agreed. But she was young, others pointed out. It was clear that the protagonist didn't get well-adjusted parenting from her mother (her father died when she was young) and had no one to confide in. Even when her toddler had a fever, she was reluctant to ask her mother for help. We ruminated over the scenario with Mitchan, the neighbour. The daughter loved to spend time at Mitchan’s house; a house that was a home with the kinds of things and activities we come to expect that the protagonist, in an enduring post-partum and post-breakup depression cannot provide.

What a relief that there was no obvious transformation (although we said this may be because of its original format as a series of short stories), and no willingness to have the protagonist endure a hero’s journey. She moved from a house burning with natural light and an empty apartment below her, to a smaller dingy apartment that had to have lights on all day with a curmudgeon older lady below that complained of noise with little reason.

The light was too much. It precluded her from seeing what she wanted out of life, and who she wanted to be. She was the shadow in the apartment. While not directly stated, it's clear she chose it in hope to reunite with her ex. The last chapters make it obvious that there's danger in luminescence, both in its environmental descriptions and with the protagonist's lamenting about the amount of deaths in her life.

She found her new home on her own and it fit. She needed to be her own light. She needed to be in a space that wasn’t marked by her husband given she “shared the name of the building whose top floor I occupied” and “was constantly mistaken for the owner.”

We discussed the way men are represented in the novel and how husbands are generally not that great in the novels we have read so far. The protagonist’s husband didn’t show up for mediation and brushed off paying alimony because he couldn’t afford it but also made no genuine effort to find work to help. Why bother when you know the mom is aware that there's no way out of the admin duties in childcare.

We have a queer mothering book coming up for the fall.

In situating the book’s genre we discussed with uncertainty the difference between autofiction and the I-novel (New Yorker and The Atlantic both classify it as autofiction yet the URL of The Atlantic piece is a-vital-I-novel). We came across many road blocks recognizing our inability to comment on Japanese literature, and Japanese culture of the 1970s. What we surmised is how courageous and vulnerable it must have been to write these stories. Tsushima was raised by a widowed single mom and became a single mom herself.

Anabela shared that Territory of Light was included in this wonderful collection, This is the Canon: Decolonize Your Bookshelves in 50 Books (2018).

Alas, the art work became an appendage rather than a connector, which we will have to work on for next time! We briefly discussed Mother's (2000–05) by Japanese artist Ishiuchi Miyako and My Body is a Needle (2023) by Korean Artist Kimsooja 김수자.

As always, there was much detail in what we discussed I am not including here. Feel free to comment to add anything, check in any mistakes, etc.

On my last post, I linked a CBC Ideas podcast on Alice Munro. Since then, her daughter, Andrea Skinner, revealed the pedophilic sexual abuse she endured from Munro’s second husband starting at 9 years old; abuse her mother dismissed and managed to twist into being a burden on her. It reminded me of Alice Walker’s daughter Rebecca, also revealing her mother’s abuses. To boot, Alice Walker is also a JK Rowling apologist.

I wrote to Anabela about it, and suggested we make time to talk about the way society fails mothers and facilitates art monsters at some point, if people are interested.

Thank you to everyone who keeps showing up.

x

Our next meeting is scheduled for the end of August, firm date TBD with The Coin by Yasmin Zaher (b.1991) released yesterday, July 10, 2024.

The Coin’s narrator is a wealthy Palestinian woman with impeccable style and meticulous hygiene. And yet the ideal self, the ideal life, remains just out of reach: her inheritance is inaccessible, her homeland exists only in her memory, and her attempt to thrive in America seems doomed from the start.

In New York, she strives to put down roots. She teaches at a school for underprivileged boys, where her eccentric methods cross boundaries. She befriends a homeless swindler, and the two participate in an intercontinental scheme reselling Birkin bags.

But America is stifling her—her willfulness, her sexuality, her principles. In an attempt to regain control, she becomes preoccupied with purity, cleanliness, and self-image, all while drawing her students into her obsessions. In an unforgettable denouement, her childhood memories converge with her material and existential statelessness, and the narrator unravels spectacularly.

In enthralling, sensory prose, The Coin explores nature and civilization, beauty and justice, class and belonging—all while resisting easy moralizing. Provocative, wry, and inviting, The Coin marks the arrival of a major new literary voice.

*Sorry I haven’t kept up as diligently with these updates, since my toddler stopped going to sleep independently for her naps & bedtime (my moments to write when the house becomes still) my writing productivity has dropped to an unfulfilling level.

1. See a great breakdown of it by the brilliant George Saunders.