Introduction

'Sentimental, heartfelt?.the exploration of Henry's changing relationship with his family and with Keiko will keep most readers turning pages...A timely debut that not only reminds readers of a shameful episode in American history, but cautions us to examine the present and take heed we don?t repeat those injustices.'-- Kirkus Reviews

?A tender and satisfying novel set in a time and a place lost forever, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet gives us a glimpse of the damage that is caused by war--not the sweeping damage of the battlefield, but the cold, cruel damage to the hearts and humanity of individual people. Especially relevant in today's world, this is a beautifully written book that will make you think. And, more importantly, it will make you feel.'
-- Garth Stein, New York Times bestselling author of The Art of Racing in the Rain

?Jamie Ford's first novel explores the age-old conflicts between father and son, the beauty and sadness of what happened to Japanese Americans in the Seattle area during World War II, and the depths and longing of deep-heart love. An impressive, bitter, and sweet debut.?
-- Lisa See, bestselling author of Snow Flower and the Secret Fan


In the opening pages of Jamie Ford's stunning debut novel, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, Henry Lee comes upon a crowd gathered outside the Panama Hotel, once the gateway to Seattle's Japantown. It has been boarded up for decades, but now the new owner has made an incredible discovery: the belongings of Japanese families, left when they were rounded up and sent to internment camps during World War II. As Henry looks on, the owner opens a Japanese parasol.

This simple act takes old Henry Lee back to the 1940s, at the height of the war, when young Henry's world is a jumble of confusion and excitement, and to his father, who is obsessed with the war in China and having Henry grow up American. While 'scholarshipping? at the exclusive Rainier Elementary, where the white kids ignore him, Henry meets Keiko Okabe, a young Japanese American student. Amid the chaos of blackouts, curfews, and FBI raids, Henry and Keiko forge a bond of friendship?and innocent love?that transcends the long-standing prejudices of their Old World ancestors. And after Keiko and her family are swept up in the evacuations to the internment camps, she and Henry are left only with the hope that the war will end, and that their promise to each other will be kept.

Forty years later, Henry Lee is certain that the parasol belonged to Keiko. In the hotel's dark dusty basement he begins looking for signs of the Okabe family's belongings and for a long-lost object whose value he cannot begin to measure. Now a widower, Henry is still trying to find his voice?words that might explain the actions of his nationalistic father; words that might bridge the gap between him and his modern, Chinese American son; words that might help him confront the choices he made many years ago.

Set during one of the most conflicted and volatile times in American history, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet is an extraordinary story of commitment and enduring hope. In Henry and Keiko, Jamie Ford has created an unforgettable duo whose story teaches us of the power of forgiveness and the human heart.


From the Hardcover edition.

Excerpt

Old Henry Lee stood transfixed by all the commotion at the
Panama Hotel. What had started as a crowd of curious onlookers
eyeballing a television news crew had now swollen into a
polite mob of shoppers, tourists, and a few punk-looking street kids, all
wondering what the big deal was. In the middle of the crowd stood
Henry, shopping bags hanging at his side. He felt as if he were waking
from a long forgotten dream. A dream he'd once had as a little boy.
The old Seattle landmark was a place he'd visited twice in his lifetime.
First when he was only twelve years old, way back in 1942-“the war
years” he liked to call them. Even then the old bachelor hotel had stood
as a gateway between Seattle's Chinatown and Nihonmachi, Japantown.
Two outposts of an old-world conflict-where Chinese and Japanese
immigrants rarely spoke to one another, while their American-born children
often played kick the can in the streets together. The hotel had always
been a perfect landmark. A perfect meeting place-where he'd
once met the love of his life.
The second time was today. It was 1986, what, forty-plus years later?
He'd stopped counting the years as they slipped into memory. After
all, he'd spent a lifetime between these bookended visits. A marriage.
The birth of an ungrateful son. Cancer, and a burial. He missed his
wife, Ethel. She'd been gone six months now. But he didn't miss her
as much as you'd think, as bad as that might sound. It was more like
quiet relief really. Her health had been bad-no, worse than bad. The
cancer in her bones had been downright crippling, to both of us, he
thought.
For the last seven years Henry had fed her, bathed her, helped her to
The Panama Hotel
(1986)
the bathroom when she needed to go, and back again when she was all
through. He took care of her night and day, 24/7 as they say these days.
Marty, his son, thought his mother should have been put in a home, but
Henry would have none of it. “Not in my lifetime,” Henry said, resisting.
Not just because he was Chinese (though that was a part of his resistance).
The Confucian ideal of filial piety-respect and reverence for
one's parents-was a cultural relic not easily discarded by Henry's generation.
He'd been raised to care for loved ones, personally, and to put
someone in a home was unacceptable. What his son, Marty, never fully
understood was that deep down there was an Ethel-shaped hole in
Henry's life, and without her, all he felt was the draft of loneliness, cold
and sharp, the years slipping away like blood from a wound that never
heals.
Now she was gone for good. She needed to be buried, Henry
thought, the traditional Chinese way, with food offerings, longevity
blankets, and prayer ceremonies lasting several days-despite Marty's fit
about cremating her. He was so modern. He'd been seeing a counselor
and dealing with his mother's death through an online support group,
whatever that was. Going online sounded like talking to no one, which
Henry had some firsthand experience in-in real life. It was lonely. Almost
as lonely as Lake View Cemetery, where he'd buried Ethel. She
now had a gorgeous view of Lake Washington, and was interred with
Seattle's other Chinese notables, like Bruce Lee and his own son, Brandon.
But in the end, each of them occupied a solitary grave. Alone
forever. It didn't matter who your neighbors were. They didn't talk
back.
When night fell, and it did, Henry chatted with his wife, asking her
how her day was. She never replied, of course. “I'm not crazy or anything,”
Henry would say to no one, “just open-minded. You never know
who's listening.” Then he'd busy himself pruning his Chinese palm or
evergreen-houseplants whose brown leaves confessed his months of
neglect. But now he had time once again. Time to care for something
that would grow stronger for a change.
Occasionally, though, he'd wonder about statistics. Not the cancer
mortality rates that had caught up with dear Ethel. Instead he thought
4 o JAMIE FORD
about himself, and his time measured on some life insurance actuarial
table. He was only fifty-six-a young man by his own standards. But
he'd read in Newsweek about the inevitable decline in the health of a surviving
spouse his age. Maybe the clock was ticking? He wasn't sure, because
as soon as Ethel passed, time began to crawl, clock or no clock.
He'd agreed to an early retirement deal at Boeing Field and now had
all the time in the world, and no one to share the hours with. No one
with whom to walk down to the Mon Hei bakery for ping pei, carrot
mooncakes, on cool autumn evenings.
Instead here he was, alone in a crowd of strangers. A man between
lifetimes, standing at the foot of the Panama Hotel once again. Following
the cracked steps of white marble that made the hotel look more like an
Art Deco halfway house. The establishment, like Henry, seemed caught
between worlds. Still, Henry felt nervous and excited, just like he had
been as a boy, whenever he walked by. He'd heard a rumor in the marketplace
and wandered over from the video store on South Jackson. At
first he thought there was some kind of accident because of the growing
size of the crowd. But he didn't hear or see anything, no sirens wailing,
no flashing lights. Just people drifting toward the hotel, like the tide
going out, pulling at their feet, propelling them forward, one step at a
time.
As Henry walked over, he saw a news crew arrive and followed them
inside. The crowd parted as camera-shy onlookers politely stepped away,
clearing a path. Henry followed right behind, shuffling his feet so as not
to step on anyone, or in turn be stepped upon, feeling the crowd press
back in behind him. At the top of the steps, just inside the lobby, the
hotel's new owner announced, “We've found something in the basement.”
Found what? A body perhaps? Or a drug lab of some kind? No,
there'd be police officers taping off the area if the hotel were a crime
scene.
Before the new owner, the hotel had been boarded up since 1950, and
in those years, Chinatown had become a ghetto gateway for tongs-gangs
from Hong Kong and Macau. The city blocks south of King Street had a
charming trashiness by day; the litter and slug trails on the sidewalk were
Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet o 5
generally overlooked as tourists peered up at egg-and-dart architecture
from another era. Children on field trips, wrapped in colorful coats and
hats, held hands as they followed their noses to the mouthwatering sight
of barbecue duck in the windows, hanging red crayons melting in the
sun. But at night, drug dealers and bony, middle-aged hookers working
for dime bags haunted the streets and alleys. The thought of this icon of
his childhood becoming a makeshift crack house made him ache with a
melancholy he hadn't felt since he held Ethel's hand and watched her exhale,
long and slow, for the last time.
Precious things just seemed to go away, never to be had again.
As he took off his hat and began fanning himself with the threadbare
brim, the crowd pushed forward, pressing in from the rear. Flashbulbs
went off. Standing on his tippy toes, he peered over the shoulder of the
tall news reporter in front of him.
The new hotel owner, a slender Caucasian woman, slightly younger
than Henry, walked up the steps holding . . . an umbrella? She popped it
open, and Henry's heart beat a little faster as he saw it for what it was. A
Japanese parasol, made from bamboo, bright red and white-with orange
koi painted on it, carp that looked like giant goldfish. It shed a film
of dust that floated, suspended momentarily in the air as the hotel owner
twirled the fragile-looking artifact for the cameras. Two more men
brought up a steamer trunk bearing the stickers of foreign ports: Admiral
Oriental Lines out of Seattle and Yokohama, Tokyo. On the side of
the trunk was the name Shimizu, hand-painted in large white letters. It
was opened for the curious crowd. Inside were clothing, photo albums,
and an old electric rice cooker.
The new hotel owner explained that in the basement she had discovered
the belongings of thirty-seven Japanese families who she presumed
had been persecuted and taken away. Their belongings had been hidden
and never recovered-a time capsule from the war years.
Henry stared in silence as a small parade of wooden packing crates
and leathery suitcases were hauled upstairs, the crowd marveling at the
once-precious items held within: a white communion dress, tarnished
silver candlesticks, a picnic basket-items that had collected dust, untouched,
for forty-plus years. Saved for a happier time that never came.
6 o JAMIE FORD
The more Henry thought about the shabby old knickknacks, the forgotten
treasures, the more he wondered if his own broken heart might
be found in there, hidden among the unclaimed possessions of another
time. Boarded up in the basement of a condemned hotel. Lost, but never
forgotten.

...view entire excerpt...

Discussion Questions

1. Father-son relationships are a crucial theme in the novel. Talk about some of these relationships and how they are shaped by culture and time. For example, how is the relationship between Henry and his father different from that between Henry and Marty? What accounts for the differences?

2. Why doesn't Henry's father want him to speak Cantonese at home? How does this square with his desire to send Henry back to China for school? Isn't he sending his son a mixed message?

3. If you were Henry, would you be able to forgive your father? Does Henry's father deserve forgiveness?

4. From the beginning of the novel, Henry wears the "I am Chinese" button given to him by his father. What is the significance of this button and its message, and how has Henry's understanding of that message changed by the end of the novel?

5. Why does Henry provide an inaccurate translation when he serves as the go-between in the business negotiations between his father and Mr. Preston? Is he wrong to betray his father's trust in this way?

6. The US has been called a nation of immigrants. In what ways do the families of Keiko and Henry illustrate different aspects of the American immigrant experience?

7. What is the bond between Henry and Sheldon, and how is it strengthened by jazz music?

8. If a novel could have a soundtrack, this one would be jazz. What is it about this indigenous form of American music that makes it an especially appropriate choice?

9. Henry's mother comes from a culture in which wives are subservient to their husbands. Given this background, do you think she could have done more to help Henry in his struggles against his father? Is her loyalty to her husband a betrayal of her son?

10. Compare Marty's relationship with Samantha to Henry's relationship with Keiko. What other examples can you find in the novel of love that is forbidden or that crosses boundaries of one kind or another?

11. What struggles did your own ancestors have as immigrants to America, and to what extent did they incorporate aspects of their cultural heritage into their new identities as Americans?

12. Does Henry give up on Keiko too easily? What else could he have done to find her?

13. What about Keiko? Why didn't she make more of an effort to see Henry once she was released from the camp?

14. Do you think Ethel might have known what was happening with Henry's letters?

15. The novel ends with Henry and Keiko meeting again after more than forty years. Jump ahead a year and imagine what has happened to them in that time. Is there any evidence in the novel for this outcome?

16. What sacrifices do the characters in the novel make in pursuit of their dreams for themselves and for others? Do you think any characters sacrifice too much, or for the wrong reasons? Consider the sacrifices Mr. Okabe makes, for example, and those of Mr. Lee. Both fathers are acting for the sake of their children, yet the results are quite different. Why?

17. Was the US government right or wrong to "relocate" Japanese-Americans and other citizens and residents who had emigrated from countries the US was fighting in WWII? Was some kind of action necessary following Pearl Harbor? Could the government have done more to safeguard civil rights while protecting national security?

18. Should the men and women of Japanese ancestry rounded up by the US during the war have protested more actively against the loss of their property and liberty? Remember that most were eager to demonstrate their loyalty to the US. What would you have done in their place?

19. Should the men and women of Japanese ancestry rounded up by the US during the war have protested more actively against the loss of their property and liberty? Remember that most were eager to demonstrate their loyalty to the US. What would you have done in their place? What’s to prevent something like this from every happening again?
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Notes From the Author to the Bookclub

Where did the idea for HOTEL ON THE CORNER OF BITTER AND SWEET come from?

It really started with the “I Am Chinese” button––this thing my father mentioned wearing as a kid. There was a bit of an identity crisis in the International District in the wake of Pearl Harbor. Many Chinese families feared for their safety, especially as the FBI was rounding up prominent members of the Japanese community. It piqued my curiosity and really led me to research the whole period.

From there I wrote a sliver of a short story, really nothing more than a vignette, and I submitted it to the now-defunct Picolata Review, where it was ultimately accepted. A few weeks later I was accepted to an intensive, immersive, week-long literary boot camp run by science fiction and fantasy writer Orson Scott Card––where we literally read and wrote fifteen to seventeen hours a day. It was while attending that camp in Virginia that Scott inspired me to write what he termed “a noble romantic tragedy.” That story was called “The Button,” about a Chinese boy (Henry) that tried to prevent his best friend (Keiko) from being taken away. I workshopped the story, changed the title to “I Am Chinese” and sent it off to Glimmer Train, where it became a finalist in their 2006 Short-Story Award for New Writers. That story became a chapter in the book.

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