How to Be an American Housewife
Margaret Dilloway, 2011
Penguin Group USA
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780425241295
Summary
A mother-daughter story about the strong pull of tradition, and the lure and cost of breaking free of it.
When Shoko decided to marry an American GI and leave Japan, she had her parents' blessing, her brother's scorn, and a gift from her husband—a book on how to be a proper American housewife.
As she crossed the ocean to America, Shoko also brought with her a secret she would need to keep her entire life...
Half a century later, Shoko's plans to finally return to Japan and reconcile with her brother are derailed by illness. In her place, she sends her grown American daughter, Sue, a divorced single mother whose own life isn't what she hoped for. As Sue takes in Japan, with all its beauty and contradictions, she discovers another side to her mother and returns to America unexpectedly changed and irrevocably touched. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—San Diego, California, USA
• Education—N/A
• Currently—lives in San Diego, California
Margaret Dilloway grew up in San Diego, California, the daughter of a Japanese mother and an American father (of Irish-Welsh origin, if you must know). A writer since she could wield a pencil and make coherent words, Margaret dabbled in other art forms, including a major in Studio Art at Scripps College. After college, she worked as Contributing Editor for two weekly newspapers; wrote and sold Bluetooth For Dummies (canceled, but used the money for LASIK so it wasn’t a total loss); and did a lot of random online writing and mystery shopping to bring in income while she watched over her three kids and improved her fiction writing.
She lives in San Diego with her children and husband, a former Army Ranger (known as Cadillac on this blog). Cadillac is rather like Mr. Darcy, because he appears very stern but he’s sweet inside (well, really only to his wife. Who I am, though I’m writing about myself in third person).
Check out 20 Random Things to learn other fun facts about Margaret. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
A strong-willed Japanese war bride, Shoko Morgan tries to run the perfect American household but only alienates her native-born children. Not until Shoko s life is fading does her grown daughter Sue travel to Japan and learn who her mother really was. This radiant debut pays moving tribute to the power of forgiveness.
People
How to Be an American Housewife by Margaret Dilloway Nope, this novel s not a Mad Men style throwback but a nuanced debut about what happens when expectations and cultures collide in a family. Shoko is a Japanese immigrant who spent her adult life trying to be the perfect American wife. When her grown daughter, Sue, gets a divorce, Shoko feels that Sue has thrown away the American dream. Does she have a point? And what is the American dream anyway? Put on the snacks and the shiraz and get ready for this novel to spark a late-into-the-night book-club gabfest.
Redbook
In this enchanting first novel, Dilloway mines her own family's history to produce the story of Japanese war bride Shoko, her American daughter, Sue, and their challenging relationship. Following the end of WWII, Japanese shop girl Shoko realizes that her best chance for a future is with an American husband, a decision that causes a decades-long rift with her only brother, Taro. While Shoko blossoms in America with her Mormon husband, GI Charlie Morgan, and their two children, she's constantly reminded that she's an outsider—reinforced by passages from the fictional handbook How to Be an American Housewife. Shoko's attempts to become the perfect American wife hide a secret regarding her son, Mike, and lead her to impossible expectations for Sue. The strained mother-daughter bond begins to shift, however, when a now-grown Sue and her teenage daughter agree to go to Japan in place of Shoko, recently fallen ill, to reunite with Taro. Dilloway splits her narrative gracefully between mother and daughter (giving Shoko the first half, Sue the second), making a beautifully realized whole.
Publishers Weekly
Dilloway narrates from both women’s perspectives, sensitively dramatizing the difficulties and struggles Shoko and Sue faced in being Japanese, American, and housewives. —Carolyn Kubisz
Booklist
Discussion Questions
1. How to Be an American Housewife is partially based on the author and her mother’s personal experiences. As a reader, do you find it more interesting when you know that there is a nonfiction element to the story?
2. Did you sympathize with Shoko’s decision not to marry Ronin? Do you think she could have—or should have—accepted his proposal?
3. Shoko marries Charlie in order to leave Japan and live a more comfortable life in America. She thinks Charlie will make a good husband, but she doesn’t yet love him. Does she turn out to be wrong, or right? Would she have been better off staying in Japan, and marrying a Japanese man?
4. A recurrent theme in the novel is how mothers and daughters communicate (for better and worse). In what ways did you feel that the difficulties between Shoko and Sue were universal to mothers and daughters, and in what ways were they cultural? How is this borne out in Sue’s relationship with Helena?
5. Shoko and Sue represent very different models and standards of motherhood, caretaking, and housekeeping. What do you consider their strengths and weaknesses, and what would you consider the most essential qualities?
6. The chapters are introduced with snippets from Shoko’s “How to Be an American Housewife” guidebook. How did you respond to that book’s advice? Did it surprise you to learn that the author’s mother had a very similar book, and that many women like Shoko were expected to follow its advice?
7. Shoko’s guidebook advises women to raise their sons differently from their daughters. Do you think boys and girls are raised differently in all cultures, including your own, and what impact does this have on all of us?
8. Prejudice and stereotypes are prevalent themes in the novel. The “How to Be an American Housewife” guidebook that Shoko is given by Charlie is largely based on stereotypes of Japanese and American cultures. It seems that all the characters feel or experience prejudice to some degree or another. Discuss the various forms of prejudice and stereotype in the novel, and their impact on the characters. Have you experienced similar sorts of prejudice in your own life?
9. The author took a risk by having two different narrators, both of whom have strengths and flaws. Are you more drawn to Sue or to Shoko? Do you think the story would have been stronger or weaker with one narrator?
10. Sue’s life and her sense of herself and her options are quite narrow and confined at the beginning of the novel. Her world expands dramatically by the novel’s end. How do the outer circumstances of Sue’s life change how she views herself on the inside? Do you think it’s significant that she finds herself in Japan?
(Questions from the author's website.)
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