Bear, Diamonds and Crane

In this collection, personal narratives take their place alongside group stories, “the wound” that “resists erasure and cultural amnesia. […] the image of barbed wire.” Kageyama-Ramakrishnan reflects on the life of her grandmother, who “acquiesced on impulse” to marry and move to the United States on the U.S.S. Jackson as well as on stories from Manzanar, the concentration camp where Japanese Americans were interned during World War II. “Perspectives on People of Japanese and American Descent” recounts a father left rubbing “his eyes free of debris behind walls/ that should have protected him,” reminding us that hope can seem far off. Yet Bear, Diamonds and Crane does offer hope: one child paraphrases the memorial plaque at Manzanar as “May the injustices of racism/ and hysteria never occur again,” and Sadako Sasaki’s protest against the atomic bomb echoes through the book: “After Hiroshima and Nagasaki, / Sadako Sasaki folded / a thousand cranes/ for world peace.” Even as Bear, Diamonds and Crane is haunted by the past resurfacing—some fearing “the dead calling them back,” another visited by a ghost who “return[s] in an olive pinto / asking me if I need / another ride,”—it hopes for children “holding cranes/ instead of rifles” and looks to the fourth

generation, the yonsei: “For you, I will keep the ripe weight,/ plums, apricots, budding persimmons.”

 

“1969,” from Bear, Diamonds and Crane: 

Early morning breakfast.
               Scrambled eggs and chopsticks.
               A yellow dog howls

                         down

La Grange on the west side
               of Los Angeles.
               A new generation

                         survives.

The grandparents are Issei.
               The parents, Nisei.
               The children are third to wear

                         their lineage.