OverDressed for Life

During the day, Mom worked as a teller, and at night and on the weekends she attended classes in tailoring. When I started elementary school, people started noticing the clothes she made for me. Soon she was earning pin money and satisfying her creativity by sewing dresses and pantsuits for the working women in town and making alterations on band uniforms, prom dresses, and store-bought clothes … To her, sewing traditionally, the way she had learned it in tailoring school, was an art.

From the food memoir Bento Box in the Heartland: My Japanese Girlhood in Whitebread America (Seal Press, 2006), by Linda Furiya.

In this quote Ms. Furiya is speaking of her mother, who was born and grew up in Tokyo where she worked as a young woman in a bank and learned how to sew on the side.

In need of some reading escapism, I was shopping my bookshelf and came upon this book. I actually started Bento Box years ago when it first came out and enjoyed it but, I put it down and didn’t go back to it until now. That is strange as this time around I could have read it in one sitting.

In her memoir, Ms. Furiya shares with us the challenges of growing up in a small Indiana town in the 1970s. Her hardworking immigrant parents spoke English awkwardly, the Furiyas (she has two older brothers) were the only Asian family in town, and she felt somewhat lost – disconnected from her Japanese culture but also less than a part of the American culture into which she was born.

Traditional Japanese cuisine played an important role in the family and Ms. Furiya uses food as a entrée into her stories. A food writer and former food columnist for the SF Chronicle, she offers details of her father’s Japanese produce garden, long road trips to secure essential ingredients sold only in large cities, and her mother’s impressive cooking skills. Sprinkled into larger tales, are descriptions of family meals that included steamed buns, rice balls, and other mouthwatering delights. (There are recipes at the end of each chapter.)

My favorite stories are of the family travels to visit other extended family in Brooklyn, NYC, New Jersey, and Japan. In the early 1970s Ms. Furiya travels alone with her mother to Japan. Meeting her mother’s family for the first time and settling into this new yet familiar culture, she finally is able to connect to her heritage but not without some inner conflict. I really enjoyed the descriptions of Tokyo and the family from the unique perspective of a ten-year-old girl.

Of course I also love that she includes fashion and textile references throughout. Food, travel, fashion. What an excellent pandemic escape book.

On another note – today is International Women’s Day, a day when we honor all that women have achieved. How to celebrate? Add a touch of purple to your outfit. Purple is the official color of IWD and one of the three suffragists colors, it symbolizes loyalty. Another way to celebrate the day is to buy and read a book written by a woman. I recommend Bento Box.