Recording and Remaking the Story of a Mother

The Dobbie judges described Chan's life writing debut as the combination of a memoir's intimacy with fictional vivacity, the convergence of "contemporary Australian experience with Japan's twentieth century modernity," and an "imaginative" recovery of the secrets hidden behind her family history. Toyo sneaking cakes to eat in the café; the temple episode in which the children live in "the Kingdom of Itchiness" with lice eggs on their clothes "bobbing" to the water surface "like sea froth" (45); the wartime recollections by Kayoko including a man whose head was cut off, but whose body kept running for ten metres; her astonishment after drinking snake broth; a motorbike ride without destination; the flinching from a goodnight kiss; avoiding exposing her speechlessness to her granddaughter.