Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto

Source of book: Borrowed from the library

I’m not even sure exactly how this one got on my list. But I guess that is what happens when you have something like 300 books on your list that have accumulated over the course of nearly ten years from a variety of sources.

Kitchen is the first novel by Japanese author Banana Yoshimoto (pen name for Mahoko Yoshimoto), written in 1988. It is a fairly short novella, delightfully compact, and achingly bittersweet. Paired with this, in the English translation from 1993, is Yoshimoto’s debut short story, “Moonlight Shadow,” which is also lovely. 

Both the novel and the short story are about grief, loss, and love. In each case, the narrator, a young woman starting out in the world, loses a person close to her, and then must navigate both the trauma of the loss and complicated feelings of love. 

In Kitchen, Mikage Sakurai already lost both parents when she was very young. She was raised by her grandmother, who dies early in the story. She is essentially taken in by a friend and his mother. Except that this is no ordinary family. Yuichi Tanabe is a pretty normal young man, but his situation is unusual. His mother died of cancer a number of years back. After that, his father came to terms with his gender identity, and now lives as a woman. (Sorry about the pronouns, I couldn’t make it make sense otherwise.) So, as Yuichi says, “I’d never lived with anyone but Eriko, she was my mother, my father. Because she was always just Eriko.” 

Eriko is a kind person, with a sense of humor, and takes in Mikage as part of the family. Eventually, Mikage gets a job as a chef (hence the name), and moves out. It is devastating when she learns that Eriko has been murdered by someone who resents his attraction to a transgender woman. 

Both Mikage and Yuichi are devastated, but unsure how to grieve, how to process things. And, to top it off, they are in love with each other, but can’t even admit it to themselves. 

The high point of the novel is a midnight delivery of katsudon as a declaration of love. It’s a fantastic scene, deliciously written. 

The book is so self-contained, so delicately written, it’s a polished gem. It feels very Japanese to me, although I’m probably not much of an expert on that. The emotions are handled with care, with perception, and with grace. It really is a lovely read. 

I want to mention a couple more lines. After Eriko’s death, Mikage comes over to Yuichi’s house, and sends him out with a shopping list so she can cook for him. (That’s both her coping mechanism and part of her bond with Eriko.) 

I heard the door close, and when I was alone I realized I was dead tired. The room was so unearthly quiet, I lost all sense of time being divided into seconds. I felt that I was the only person alive and moving in a world brought to a stop. 

Houses always feel like that after someone has died. 

 And then this one, a reflection by Mikage about her co-workers and their lives. 

Those women lived their lives happily. They had been taught, probably by caring parents, not to exceed the boundaries of their happiness regardless of what they were doing. But therefore they could never know real joy. Which is better? Who can say? Everyone lives the way she knows best. What I mean by “their happiness” is living a life untouched as much as possible by the knowledge that we are really, all of us, alone. That’s not a bad thing. Dressed in their aprons, their smiling faces like flowers, learning to cook, absorbed in their little troubles and perplexities, they fall in love and marry. I think that’s great. I wouldn’t mind that kind of life. Me, when I’m utterly exhausted by it all, when my skin breaks out, on those lonely evenings when I call my friends again and again and nobody’s home, then I despise my own life -- my birth, my upbringing, everything. I feel only regret for the whole thing. 

The catharsis of the ending feels so gratifying because of these earlier moments of raw grief and existential despair. 

“Moonlight Shadow” is a bit different, although it starts with a loss. Satsuki is reeling from the death of her long-time boyfriend. He died in a car crash along with his brother’s girlfriend. (Nothing scandalous about it - he was just giving her a ride.) Satsuki and the brother, Hiiragi, deal with their grief in different ways. Hiiragi wears his girlfriend’s school uniform everywhere. Satsuki takes up running (and probably anorexia as well.) Things change when Satsuki meets a mysterious woman, Urara, at the bridge where she and her boyfriend used to meet. Urara brings her to the bridge again at a certain time where they see a mystical phenomenon, and Urara, Hiiragi, and Satsuki are able to say goodbye to their beloveds. It isn’t as deep (or nearly as long) as Kitchen, but it shares the polished, bittersweet loveliness. It is possible, perhaps, to see “Moonlight Shadow” as a first draft of the themes which Kitchen would explore in more detail. 

I very much enjoyed this book, and can definitely recommend it as worth the time. Only a handful of Banana Yoshimoto’s books have been translated into English, but I may have to seek them out. 

John Ortberg and the ongoing inability of Evangelicals to think ethically about sex

First, the story itself: 

Evangelical megachurch pastor John Ortberg has been placed on administrative leave after it came out that he allowed a man who confessed to having sexual attraction to children (aka a pedophile) to continue to work with children at the church unsupervised - including overnight events. Apparently, Ortberg also did not even bother to inform the elder board of either the decision or the man’s pedophilia. 

Um, that’s pretty bad. That’s intentionally putting children at risk of abuse. 

In my book, that should be an automatic and permanent disqualification for ministry. 

But it gets even more interesting because of how it went down, and who blew the whistle on this. 

Ortberg has a transgender son, Daniel Lavery (formerly Mallory Ortberg) and it is he who, after confronting his father, went to the elder board - which is when this all blew up. 

Apparently, Daniel decided to elevate the issue after his dad basically said “you’re a pervert too, so you have nothing useful to say on how I should handle this.” I think it is safe to say that relationship is now over. (Daniel called it a breach of trust - and I very much agree.) 

I have some thoughts on this whole thing because of my own experience within Evangelicalism. Specifically, this was both thoroughly predictable, and also symptomatic of a deep sickness within Evangelicalism that makes it impossible for Evangelicals to think or act ethically when it comes to sexual issues. 

So here goes:

1. Evangelicalism protects predators

In the ongoing meltdown of Evangelicalism over the last decade or so, this has been a recurring problem. It is, indeed, endemic to the system. From C. J. Mahaney to Bill Gothard to Doug Wilson to Josh Duggar - I could name probably two dozen more prominent cases where church leaders have chosen to cover up child abuse and protect the perpetrators over the victims. 

There are three factors that I believe dictate this pattern:

a. Evangelical beliefs about gender essentialism include the belief that men cannot control their sexual urges, which are not really their fault anyway. Thus, women need to be controlled so men don’t lust, and women are expected to “fix” broken men by catering to their every sexual demand. This in turn leads to a culture in which predatory men are protected from justice. They get the benefit of the doubt in a way that women do not.

b. Evangelicals think about sex in terms of “forbidden” or “not forbidden” rather than in terms of ethics. Thus, there is no difference in their minds between raping children and having consentual premarital sex - it’s all forbidden sex. This means that they treat pedophile predators with the same “grace” that they do couples who get ahead of things, so to speak. This prevents them from seeing sexual predators as just that: predators. If they were recognized as predators, then leaders would focus on protecting their prey from predation. 

c. Evangelicals (just like Catholics and other religious groups) tend to believe that sexual predation is a “sin” problem, not a criminal problem or psychological problem. Thus, a pedophile can “repent” and then is not considered a problem. This is at the root of why churches cover up abuse rather than immediately report it to law enforcement. And it is also why they allow known pedophiles to have access to children. They genuinely believe that it is just another sin that can be repented from and then it will just go away. (Hint: it doesn’t.)

This is one reason why I don’t have our kids involved with church activities. The trust is broken. I have zero confidence that my kids’ safety will be protected. It is more likely that the hurt feelings of a predator will matter more to church leadership. 

This seems like it really should be a no-brainer: err on the side of protecting kids. Hey, didn’t a famous person once say something like that? 

2. Evangelicalism does not actually understand pedophilia

See above for part of this. By treating pedophilia as just another sin - something very much like making out with your girlfriend before marriage - they miss pretty much everything important about it. And that includes the information needed to help those pedophiles who can be helped (and are willing to be treated.) For more on the psychological diagnosis and treatment, this Psychology Today article is helpful. 

For what it is worth, Daniel is the one who seems to understand this - he is compassionate, and expresses his admiration for anyone who seeks to get help for sexual compulsion. (You can read his twitter thread about the incident here - I recommend it.) He also referred the pedophile to an appropriate counsellor. 

Here’s the thing: on the one hand, not all pedophiles are predators. And the recidivism rate is actually fairly low - most people do the right thing. But on the other, there are the predators, who generally share common traits, such as narcissism, charm, and the ability to avoid detection. These predators generally have dozens of victims before they are caught. 

This suggests something pretty damn obvious: a decent human being who finds himself (it’s mostly men) sexually attracted to children would decide to never work with children. It’s no different than a person with uncontrolled epilepsy: that person has no business driving a car, and a decent human being with that problem would never get behind the wheel knowing the damage he or she could cause. This isn’t rocket science. 

So, a person who expresses sexual attraction to children should not work with children. Period. If they are not a predator (and there is no indication at this time that this man ever acted on his urges), then I have no problem with them serving in other capacities or being treated with decency. But they shouldn’t be around children. And if they wanted to be around children knowing their urges, that in itself is a pretty good indication that they are in fact a predator. 

In light of this, just how horrifying is Ortberg’s decision? He literally encouraged a pedophile to continue to work unsupervised with children! What the actual fuck?!! Of all the things to do, that was literally the worst possible choice. 

And he couldn’t have asked for advice from his elder board? That’s problematic. (And also pretty much par for the course with Evangelical pastors in my experience.) Better yet, he might have asked advice from the mothers of small children in his congregation. But, well, women don’t really matter in Evangelical culture - they believe God wants only men to lead. 

3. Ortberg’s treatment of his son is thoroughly sickening

When I read Daniel’s thread, my jaw hit the floor and I felt nauseated. Because what Ortberg said was thoroughly sickening and disgusting. 

Let me be blunt:

Ortberg repeated the LGBTQ version of the “blood libel.” 

Let me explain that one. During most of the Middle Ages, one of the nastiest antisemitic belief was the “blood libel.” The church, sadly, encouraged a belief that an important Jewish ritual was murdering and draining the blood of Christian children to use in making matzah. 

Evangelicals have their own version of this, which is that LGBTQ people are all sexual predators who want to rape and molest children and turn them gay. (And, of course, the related idea that transgender people only do what they do so they can get into the “wrong” bathroom and rape innocent women.) Just as in the case of antisemitism, this gross slander of LGBTQ people is used as justification to persecute and perpetrate violence against them. And to legislate their rights out of existence.

So look at that again: Ortberg told Daniel that because he was a “pervert” too that he had no standing to suggest an alternative. Oh, and also said that homosexuality and pedophilia are similar. Yep, “you’re transgender which is similar to pedophilia so you are just as much of a threat as the pedophile is.”

Seriously sickening.

Daniel’s statement that this breaks the trust he once had with his family is an understatement. This is more like using a thermonuclear weapon to burn a bridge. If my parents ever did that, I would never be in their presence again - and they would not be around my children. 

This also illustrates the reasons that Evangelicalism finds itself completely unable to discuss sex in an ethical way. 

When you conflate the sexual assault and abuse of children with a loving and consensual same-sex relationship, you have already failed to make the most important ethical distinction. Consensual sex is NOT the same thing as rape and predation. It is not. And Evangelicals wonder why nobody gives a fuck about what they say about sex? Maybe because they show more sympathy for predators than for victims? Maybe because they can’t bring themselves to acknowledge that consent matters? 

And maybe because they insist on slandering LGBTQ people, who are no more likely to be predators than cishet people. 

Side note: I cannot help but feel that there is also an element of misogyny at work here too. I’ve spent enough time in Evangelicalism (4 decades!) to have seen time and time again a woman’s legitimate concerns pushed aside by a man who knows better. Women are (in practice and sometimes in theory too) expected to sit down, shut up, and know their place. 

So in this case, “You are really a woman, no matter what you say, and God speaks to me as a leader, not to people like you.” One of my theories about why Evangelicalism has gone so far off the moral rails is that they have systematically excluded women from decision-making at the higher levels. I cannot imagine that an elder board with equal representation for women would have supported Ortberg’s decision. 

4. Daniel Lavery deserves nothing but praise for his actions in this matter.

Seriously. At the cost of his relationship with his parents, he did the right thing. Multiple right things. 

First, he gave outstanding advice to the pedophile (who seems to have wanted to do the right thing himself): get treatment, get out of situations where you might be a risk to children. 

Second, he gave his father the chance to do the right thing. 

Third, when that didn’t work, he elevated the issue. Fortunately that worked. I hope Menlo Church does the right thing and permanently removes Ortberg from ministry - he is clearly unfit for leadership. [Note: I’m not holding my breath.]

Fourth, his statement on twitter is outstanding. He was clear about the situation, but without hyperbole. 

I don’t know if he will run across this blog, but if he does: Daniel, I admire you and support you one hundred percent. The world is a better place because of what you did. 

Having had a difficult relationship with my own parents over religious and political differences, I feel the pain too, although obviously not to that extent. It hurts when those you love choose toxic religious dogma over relationship and understanding. 

***

Note on Daniel Lavery:

Daniel Lavery has written for Slate.com, first as Mallory Ortberg, then Daniel Mallory Ortberg, and now Danny M. Lavery. I first ran across him there. 

In addition, he has written a few books, including The Merry Spinster, which I read last year. It is an enjoyable and bizarre mashup of fairy tales and other stories, with a decidedly gender-bending flavor. If you want to support him, why not buy one of his books?

Update: The Washington Post did a piece on Lavery recently. 

UPDATE JULY 2020:

Well, it turns out to be even worse. The pedophile in questions is....wait for it.....another of John Ortberg's sons.
So this isn't just bad judgment, it is nepotism and hypocrisy. One set of rules for the leaders, another for everyone else. And a bit of sibling favoritism in the bargain. Color me unsurprised. My own experience in my family is that theological and gender orthodoxy are valued above any virtues, and that following those rules entitles certain family members to a pass for psychopathic and abusive behavior.

Note on the use of the “Dead Name”:

It has been brought to my attention that it is problematic to refer to the former name of a transgender person - the old name is their “dead name.” In this particular case, I am uncertain how to handle things, because Daniel Lavery is a very new name for someone who has written a lot under both the actual dead name, and under his “maiden” name (for lack of a better term - I propose the use of “swain name” for those men who buck tradition and take their wives’ surname). In fact, his latest book, Something That May Shock and Discredit You, which comes out later this year, is published under “Daniel Mallory Ortberg.” Lavery does not have an official author website, alas, or I would just link to that. 

Anyway, this is an uncomfortable compromise no matter what, and I would prefer that readers be able to locate Lavery’s writing under all pen names, past and present. 

As is always the case, to the extent that I can, I try to accommodate the wishes of the author as to names and pronouns. Daniel, if you run across this post, feel free to contact me and help me out here.  

Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi

Source of book: Borrowed from the library

This is, without a doubt, the most unusual - and dark - book I have read this year. I’m not quite sure how to describe it, but I will give it a shot. 

The central premise is that the protagonist, Ada, is an ogbanje, a “spirit child.” I discovered this concept earlier this year in Chinua Achebe’s book, Things Fall Apart. In the original Igbo mythology, such a child is a spirit, or a god if you will, and comes to the parents for the purpose (more or less) of breaking the birth mother’s heart by dying young. And then repeating the process over and over. It isn’t difficult to figure out the way such a myth would arise: in an era of high infant mortality, weak genes (or maternal malnutrition or whatever) could easily cause a string of infant deaths. Just the stories of Suzanna Wesley or John Donne or Gustave Mahler alone are filled with dead babies. 

In Freshwater’s version of the story, though, the ogbanje is a hybrid: a human child possessed or occupied by spirits/gods. For Ada, the problem is that she didn’t die - she lived, but tormented by the spirits which are part of her, but that she cannot come to peace with. 

The structure of the book is fascinating as well. There are multiple narrators, with distinctive voices. Much of the book is narrated by “we,” the plural voice of the spirits. Occasionally, Ada her self is heard, usually in the form of a diary entry or a poem, until she finds a voice at the end, which combines her with her spirits in style. The third voice is that of one spirit, who Ada names Asughara. This spirit is feral, animalistic, the personification of desire and darkness. The best I can do to describe the voices is that Ada is timid but recognizably human. We is more like a Greek chorus, with figurative, mythical, and serenely confident. Asughara is personal and lets us see more of Ada than even Ada herself, but is so much concentrated energy and malice and exuberance in one, that she seems other than human. (Which is, presumably, the point.)  

Asughara is “born,” in the language of the book, as the result of a trauma. Ada is raped by a boy at college, and Asughara separates from the We at that time. Asughara becomes the way that Ada can function sexually: Asughara is full of violent lust and desire, but uses sex to punish the men who sleep with Ada. (They deserve it, mostly, because Asughara chooses men who are used to using women.) Freud might describe her as the Id - and not a stereotypically feminine one at that. Even Asughara admits that her flaw is that she has no concern for the emotional consequences to others - even to Ada. 

There is one other spirit who separates somehow from the We, and that is the male spirit Ada names Saint Vincent. He is gentle in all the ways that Asughara is not, and presents an alternative to her dysfunctional sexuality. But, as he is male, he drives Ada to hook up with women, which isn’t at all what Asughara wants (although she tolerates it for Ada’s sake.) 

If this sounds a bit complicated and crazy, it is. And even more so as we see the battles raging in Ada. Asughara feels called back to the spirit realm, and the only way she can do this is by killing Ada - so she pushes Ada toward suicide. This part of the book is damn dark, and I wouldn’t recommend it for someone who is already suicidal. It got to me, and I don’t tend toward depression. (I have my other demons, believe me, and have been in some dark places related to circumstances, but suicidal ideation isn’t the direction my brain is wired to seek first.) 

Eventually, Ada has to find equilibrium in her own way, through the understanding of her ogbanje nature. 

In order to gain some understanding of the book, I think it is helpful to understand the author. Emezi identifies as transgender and non-binary...and also as an ogbanje. The book isn’t strictly autobiographical, but it is significantly so. The author has said that they used their life as the skeleton for the story. But even more than this, it is an emotional and psychological autobiography, a look inside the author’s psyche. For Emezi, the ogbanje explanation makes more sense and “works” better than either the Western psychology framework or the Catholic Christianity that they were raised with. I have decidedly mixed feelings about this because of my own background. I was raised in the “nouthetic counseling” subculture, which is similar (but not exactly) to the Catholic approach that Emezi describes in interviews about that book. For me, that approach was borderline abusive, as it ascribes pain and trauma and grief and all dysfunction to specific sin in the life of the one who suffers. It denies any biological or circumstantial basis for mental illness, and blames its victims for their own pain. Particularly as Bill Gothard taught it, it pretty well fucked me up during my late teens. (And that’s before you get to the lasting relationship damage in my extended family, but that’s a different post.) It took a while (and the process is ongoing) to retrain my brain to understand how and why I react - in a way that doesn’t require “spiritualization” of things - or heaping guilt on me for negative feelings.

On the other hand, I do believe in my deepest being that there is more to life and the self and the psyche than chemistry and electricity. I believe in - and have experienced and continue to experience - a spiritual dimension that is as much a part of me as the physical being that science can describe. So, while contemporary Western psychology has been helpful in understanding myself and my reactions, it isn’t all there is. 

Two things tend to make my understanding of Emezi’s experiences difficult. First, I am a Western person, raised in my particular culture. As such, I can only view Igbo mythology from the outside. (I use that word not as a pejorative, but in the same way C. S. Lewis and Joseph Campbell do. Myth isn’t necessarily untrue, it is just true in a way that isn’t necessarily literally, empirically, naturalistically true. Rather, it is true in some combination of psychological, metaphorical, spiritual, and ontological truth.) The second barrier is that I do not share Emezi’s psychological reality. True, I have conversations in my head all the time (my wife teases me because she can tell), and even arguments. But I never feel like someone or something other than “me” is in my head. I don’t even experience the “angel and devil on shoulder” dichotomy. (If I ever do, can I have Crowley and Aziraphale, please? Please?) So, I have never felt like in a way consistent with the experience of being an ogbanje. 

I couldn't resist.

That said, because of my own experiences, I can see how Emezi could find an Igbo explanation for their experience to be helpful and useful. 

Similarly, I really don’t have a framework to understand Emezi’s other identity experiences. I am strongly cishet, although I don’t fit our culture’s masculine stereotypes particularly well. I feel male...but like a male who loves violin, poetry, nature, suggleing, cooking, and cats. I was mistaken for gay a lot as a kid and young adult for that reason. (I literally laughed out loud when I read Alice Munro’s riff on sexual orientation in one of her stories.) The best I can recommend is the excellent Vox article they wrote about their transition surgeries. It gives an insight in their experience, and the pain and trauma that live in their psyche. 

In that sense, this book was disturbing because it gave a full-on immersion into a psyche which is totally unfamiliar, and occasionally terrifying, to me. I don’t mean that being trans and/or nonbinary is terrifying. I mean seeing into the depths of pain and trauma that leads to self destructive and cruel behavior, and the self-loathing and unwellness that drags one toward suicide. The problem, if it can be called that, is that Emezi writes so very compellingly of this. At several points, I was sure I was absolutely hating the book, and hating what it made me feel, but at the end, after I caught my breath, I had to admit that I admired and respected it. A book that is so real and takes you on that kind of journey cannot be characterized as anything less than outstanding. The writing does what it was intended to do. This is a book that will stay with me. 

In addition to my caution that the book may be a bit much for someone already experiencing suicidal thoughts (although, again, I’m not wired in that direction, so I could be reading this completely wrong), I should also mention that it contains psychologically (not physically) graphic rape and assault. There is a lot of sex in this book, and it can get graphic, although it is all completely necessary, and it is brief. 

The other thing that might be a trigger for those who are connected to the Christian religious description, is that Jesus (as “Yshwa”) is a character. He too occupies Ada’s head, although he is an invited visitor, not part of her, like the spirits. The problem is that Yshwa is a personification of the Problem of Evil. Why wasn’t he there during Ada’s rape - or the sexual assaults we learn she experienced as a young child? Why didn’t he prevent her mother from abandoning the family? Emezi grew up Catholic, so they know the theology and scripture well enough. What is most fascinating is the book’s conclusion about Yshwa: he too was a spirit violently dragged into a fleshly body. He was an ogbanje too. As a result, he knows all too well the pain of being human and being trapped in flesh, and does not want to repeat the experience. I certainly hadn’t thought of that view of things, I suppose. Yshwa is thus not a villain, or even close. He tries, along with Saint Vincent, to encourage Ada to travel a less destructive path. But Ada can never escape the effects of the religion she has imbibed, which taught her that the loss of her virginity made her unacceptable to Yshwa. (Not that Yshwa shares this belief - he may not be able to protect and comfort Ada, but he doesn’t condemn her at all.) I found this perspective on Yshwa to be fascinating. Some of my tradition may freak out, of course. And insist that the book is evil because it doesn’t insist on their preferred theology. I prefer to appreciate the unexpected version of our own mythology, which seems consistent with the mystery of incarnation. 

Because the book is so autobiographical, it is hard to know whether Emezi will be able to write additional books of this quality. I hope they are not a one hit wonder, because they write compellingly. 

***

Just a note on pronouns: I am using “they,” etcetera, because Emezi uses them on their website. The various articles on them are inconsistent, some using female pronouns rather than neutral. Since many of the sources are ones who do aim to use preferred pronouns, I assume that Emezi made a change fairly recently, and that female pronouns were previously acceptable to them.