Harvest Son: Planting Roots in American Soil
Harvest Son: Planting Roots in American Soil
Lowest New Price: $8.94List Price: $22.95 Average Customer Rating: 5.0 out of 5 Description:A Japanese-American farmer's tribute to family, farm, and community. Epitaph for a Peach-David Mas Masumoto's successful and critically acclaimed first book-grew out of his attempt to save his orchard of old-fashioned juicy peaches from replacement by a more commercially viable brand. His glorious new book, Harvest Son, is about taking over and renewing the family farm. In prose of zen-like calm and clarity, Masumoto relates how he learned to prune vines and survive a storm; to value the knowledge of old farmers and the rusty tools forgotten in the shed; and to take on a leadership role in his Buddhist community. He also shares life vividly in the present: how it feels really to sweat while you work; the way dust cakes on your neck when you're driving a tractor; the pleasure of rinsing off under a cold faucet; a grandmother's joy at hearing that her grandson will visit her birthplace; the way grapes are dried into raisins; and the way a family works together in the fields. Masumoto celebrates the continuity in which he harvests grapes from the vines that his grandfather planted. He also mourns the losses suffered during the Japanese-American internment before he was born. But by knitting together past and future, he holds on to what matters, despite the pressures of change. Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company Customer Review: 5 out of 5 Customer Review: 5 out of 5 He is a champion of hard work, viewing calluses as "badges of honor earned only after years in the fields,...The hands tell a story of worth..." And, as evidenced in his affecting memoir, Harvest Son, he is an author whose fluid pen scrolls as gracefully as kanji, the ancient Japanese script in which each word is a picture. Evocative descriptions of abundant harvests and the delicately limned shade of a near-ripe peach are lyric testimony that farming is not only his occupation, it is his modus vivendi. Writing with spare yet lustrous precision, Mr. Masumoto traces his life's journey in flashbacks, exploring the past to chart his future. Having learned that in 1942 his grandparents, along with some 16,000 Japanese-Americans were relocated to internment camps, Mr. Masumoto embarked on a painful quest, searching the Arizona desert for traces of the Gila River Relocation Center, his family's four-year home. "A few low cement pillars sunken into the ground" and "a pile of broken thick white dishes" were the only remnants of those interrupted lives. Another pilgrimage was to Japan, where he found his grandmother's brother. Held hostage by rice paddies, his uncle's farmhouse "looked like the face of an old man with wrinkles and age spots." The floor was of packed earth..." But, blessings of all blessings, there was the "ofuro" or Japanese hot tub, which "Following a day in the fields, ...tempered worn and broken spirits. The soothing water fostered a benevolence and a feeling of optimism." Mr. Masumoto eventually returned to the California valley of his childhood, where he found satisfaction and a connectedness in tending the vines planted by his grandfathers. From the author we learn a Japanese word "shoganai" meaning "it can't be helped." This is a word borne of forbearance, we are told, as despite their painful past Japanese-Americans accepted their new country "with a bow of humility. Not weakness but silent strength." When a surprise hailstorm destroyed what promised to be a bumper crop, Mr. Masumoto asked himself why he continued to farm. His answer may be "shoganai." Today, Mr. Masumoto is a leader in his local Buddhist community, one of the few sansei or third generation Japanese-Americans who remain in the farmland that nurtured them. It is left to him to serve as chairman at many funerals, as one generation honors another. Harvest Son is a joyful, poignant reminder that it is both duty and privilege to do so. Customer Review: 5 out of 5 --> Find out more about "Harvest Son: Planting Roots in American Soil" at Amazon.com or Order Now |
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