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A Jar of Dreams

Yoshiko Uchida (New York: Antheneum, 1981)

Introduction

This is a story of a Japanese family in the 1930s in California, USA. Rinko is the 11-year-old daughter who wants to be like everyone else in her all-white school. Her aunt comes from Japan and helps Rinko become strong, proud of her Japanese heritage, and able to dream.

The states on the West Coast of the United States were a hotbed of intolerance and discrimination toward Asians, especially Japanese and Chinese. As the United States approached their entry into World War II in 1942, hostility towards Japanese continued to increase. By 1942, 120,000 Japanese-Americans were forced to leave most of their possessions and were forcefully held in internment camps. Similarly, Canada forced 23,000 of its citizens of Japanese heritage to resettle in designated towns and the men were forced to work on farms or in road camps.

Excerpt from pages 5-6

Rinko describes how she felt when an elderly white man yelled at her and her brother as they were walking past his business, “Get outta here you damn Jap kids!”

“I hated the way I felt when [he] called me a Jap. It made me really mad, but it also made me feel as though I was no good. I felt ashamed of who I was and wished I could shrink right down and disappear into the sidewalk. There are a few white girls in my class at school who make me feel that way too. They never call me ‘Ching Chong Chinaman’ or ‘Jap’ the way some boys do, but they have other ways of being mean. They talk to each other, but they talk over and around and right through me like I was a pane of glass. And that makes me feel like a big nothing. Some days I feel so left out, I hate my black hair and my Japanese face. I hate having a name like Rinko Tsujimura that nobody can pronounce or remember. And more than anything I wish I could be just like everybody else.”

Questions and Discussion

How do we make those with differences feel inferior and insecure?

Why are differences so often seen as negative instead of positive, whether they are physical differences, different opinions, or a different way of doing something?

What can we do to embrace difference instead of shun it?

What can we do to make those with differences feel included, equal, and accepted?