Rating: 3/5, average
The art in this sequel to My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness is even better than that in the first one, but this book seems to be struggling to find more content to talk about. Kabi actually says at the beginning that she couldn’t think of what to draw for a month after she signed on to draw a series.
The idea to make a “solo exchange diary” came from her editor, who saw a post Kabi made on Twitter about doing an exchange diary by herself when she was in middle school. Usually an exchange diary is a physical book that is passed back and forth between two friends, alternately writing things about their lives and little bits of trivia that they want to share with each other. Japanese exchange diaries are embellished and have directed activities (like “write your 5 favorite movies”) and I could kind of see why the author might choose to use one over a regular blank diary. Still, it’s a little sad to be doing one by yourself, but this book is still very much about exploring the loneliness in the author’s life.
This book talks a lot more about the author’s family, including their reactions to the first book. The first book features a little bit about Kabi’s family, but this one I think goes into a lot more depth and is more revealing of problems between other members of the family, like that her mom feels trapped in the house, having to care for her husband’s elderly mother. Kabi worries that if she moves out, she’ll be leaving her mom alone without anyone to support her emotionally, and she’s worried that her feeling of guilt will suck her back into the house.
This book is also about Kabi trying to move out of her house and be independent. She has an interesting definition of independence: Independence doesn’t mean doing everything yourself, it means relying on a bunch of people instead of only your spouse or parents, so the weight is lighter on each. She tries to move out a couple times, only to return home because she keeps failing to make the apartment comfortable. I had kind of a hard time relating to this part because I always liked the feeling of being independent in the sense of buying groceries and cooking for myself… I find it hard to relate when young adults talk about how those really basic “taking care of yourself”/”adulting” tasks are super difficult, but I guess everybody struggles with different stuff.
I really liked when she talked about having her own personal measuring stick vs comparing herself to others. She says that the reason she was unable to have confidence in herself was because she didn’t keep track of how far she was progressing against her past self and so she would judge herself by others’ opinions of her instead. I think this realization shows a lot of progress from where she had been in My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness. At the end, she was talking about how much the positive feedback for her first book helped her self-esteem, but I was right in predicting that this outside praise wouldn’t sustain her in the long run. So individual measuring stick… it’s a useful concept, but I have to admit it’s a little obvious.
Running with that idea, though… I wonder how much Japanese culture impacted Nagata Kabi’s insecurities. When I reflect, I think Jewish culture has had a lot of impact on the things I’m insecure about, mainly whether I’m a good or a bad person / moral or immoral… I wonder how Jewish and Japanese sense of obligation and morality differ? In Jewish culture, you’re expected to 1. earn a lot of money 2. make your parents proud 3. serve your community / do mitzvot (good deeds) 4. give money to charity, etc etc… a lot of people will say that in Jewish culture making a lot of money doesn’t matter, but I get such looks of pity from older Jewish people when I say I spend my time volunteering and don’t have a “real” job. I don’t usually get that reaction from Christians, and I think it’s because in Christian morality self-sacrifice is considered the right thing to do and also a lot more Christians are poor so it’s not quite as uncommon.
I think the insecurities Kabi absorbs from Japanese culture are more about not contributing to society, but it’s hard for me to comment on that because I haven’t really experienced it firsthand as a member of a Japanese family. If you’d like to tell me what insecurities you’ve absorbed from your culture, I’d be really interested to hear it in the comments. 😉
In general, I think this book was pretty good but there were a lot of points where I felt like I was with a friend who was just complaining about their life and it was a little boring. The metaphors in this book feel a little stale. It feels a little like it was thrown together without much of a plan (I’m one to talk, my reviews are super meandering, haha). It was interesting, but it didn’t really pull me through as much as the first book. It was very personal, and almost too specific to be relatable. There’s kind of a balance with relatability – it can be too general, where it ends up not appealing to anybody because it’s trying too hard to appeal to everybody, or it can be too specific, where it just feels like reading someone’s diary and the reader ends up feeling alienated by the vast difference in experience. I think this was the latter…
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