Publication date:
23 December 2009Publisher
Multilingual MattersDimensions:
210x148mm6x8"
ISBN-13: 9781847692337
This is the first in-depth examination of “half-Japanese” girls in Japan focusing on ethnic, gendered and embodied ‘hybrid’ identities. Challenging the myth of Japan as a single-race society, these girls are seen struggling to positively manoeuvre themselves and negotiate their identities into positions of contestation and control over marginalizing discourses which disempower them as ‘others’ within Japanese society as they begin to mature. Paradoxically, at other times, within more empowering alternative discourses of ethnicity, they also enjoy and celebrate cultural, symbolic, social and linguistic capital which they discursively create for themselves as they come to terms with their constructed identities of “Japaneseness”, “whiteness” and “halfness/doubleness”. This book has a colourful storyline throughout - narrated in the girls’ own voices - that follows them out of childhood and into the rapid physical and emotional growth years of early adolescence.
This timely, fascinating and academically rigorous book provides a rich contribution to the study of shifting identity, gender and ethnicity and how a linguistic approach can shed light on these. Having lived half of her own life in Japan, and as the parent of a 'multi-ethnic' child, Laurel Kamada writes from a position of strength and understanding. Her study is a qualitative, longitudinal one, drawing on a variety of analytical frameworks. The data shows us the lived experiences of these 'multi-ethnic' girls, from their tribulations to their celebrations of self. Importantly, Kamada never underestimates the fine-grained complexity of her topic.