A Study Guide for Yoko Kawashima Watkins's "So Far From the Bamboo Grove"
()
About this ebook
Read more from Gale
A study guide for Frank Herbert's "Dune" Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A Study Guide for S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Louis Sachar's "Holes" Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Study Guide for James Clavell's "Shogun" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Arthur Miller's "The Crucible" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for John Rawls's "A Theory of Justice" Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Study Guide for Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for George Orwell's Animal Farm Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Study Guide for Psychologists and Their Theories for Students: JEAN PIAGET Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for William Shakespeare's Macbeth Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Virginia Woolf's "Mrs. Dalloway" Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Study Guide for Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for James Joyce's "James Joyce's Ulysses" Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Business Plans Handbook: Bakery Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Octavia Butler's "Parable of the Sower" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for George Orwell's 1984 Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A Study Guide for Psychologists and Their Theories for Students: ALBERT BANDURA Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Lois Lowry's The Giver Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Study Guide for Umberto Eco's "The Name of the Rose" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Shirley Jackson's The Lottery Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBusiness Plans Handbook: Furniture Businesses Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Business Plans Handbook: Auto Detailing Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Study Guide for Marjane Satrapi's "Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide (New Edition) for F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Wole Soyinka's "Death and the King's Horsemen" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for "Postmodernism" Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Study Guide for T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to A Study Guide for Yoko Kawashima Watkins's "So Far From the Bamboo Grove"
Related ebooks
A Study Guide for Joy Nozomi Kogawa's "Obasan" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Gail Tsukiyama's "The Samurai's Garden" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFormosa Calling: An Eyewitness Account of the February 28th, 1947 Incident Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for John Okada's "No-No Boy" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Gene Yang's "American Born Chinese" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Maxine Hong Kingston's "Women Warrior: Memoirs of Girlhood Among Ghosts" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAround the Bend I Go Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Helen Keller's Best Friend Belle Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ancestry Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Cuz Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Travel Diary of Amos Lee: Monkeying in Malaysia!: The Travel Diary of Amos Lee, #2 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLegends from the Pacific: Book 1: Asian and Pacific Island folklore and cultural history Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Space Between the Raindrops Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHonolulu Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFarah Rocks Florida Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLad A Dog: The Classic Animal Story Loved by Generations of Readers Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Movie That No One Saw Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTwelve Impossible Things Before Breakfast: Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLet Me Tell You Something About that Night Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsVincent Ventura and the Mystery of the Chupacabras / Vincent Ventura y el misterio del chupacabras Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGrandmothers, Our Grandmothers: Remembering the "Comfort Women" of World War II Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPeter and Wendy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5"A Study Guide for Ryunosuke Akutagawa's ""Rash?mon""" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSpider Boys: Singapore Classics Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsElizabeth Warren: Nevertheless, She Persisted Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRiki and The Dream Seed: Riki and her cat Adventures, #1 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDifferent: Short Stories for Middle School and High School Students and English Learners Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFarah Rocks Summer Break Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGreat Expectations Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Kyoto Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Teaching Methods & Materials For You
Becoming Cliterate: Why Orgasm Equality Matters--And How to Get It Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Three Bears Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Speed Reading: How to Read a Book a Day - Simple Tricks to Explode Your Reading Speed and Comprehension Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Master the GED Test, 28th Edition Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Speed Reading: Learn to Read a 200+ Page Book in 1 Hour: Mind Hack, #1 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Easy Spanish Stories For Beginners: 5 Spanish Short Stories For Beginners (With Audio) Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5How To Be Hilarious and Quick-Witted in Everyday Conversation Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The 5 Love Languages of Children: The Secret to Loving Children Effectively Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fluent in 3 Months: How Anyone at Any Age Can Learn to Speak Any Language from Anywhere in the World Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Principles: Life and Work Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Financial Feminist: Overcome the Patriarchy's Bullsh*t to Master Your Money and Build a Life You Love Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Success Principles(TM) - 10th Anniversary Edition: How to Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How to Take Smart Notes. One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How You Learn Is How You Live: Using Nine Ways of Learning to Transform Your Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5From 150 to 179 on the LSAT Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Conversational Spanish Dialogues: Over 100 Spanish Conversations and Short Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Jack Reacher Reading Order: The Complete Lee Child’s Reading List Of Jack Reacher Series Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Personal Finance for Beginners - A Simple Guide to Take Control of Your Financial Situation Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...And Others Don't Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Defining Moments in Black History: Reading Between the Lies Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Weapons of Mass Instruction: A Schoolteacher's Journey Through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Chicago Guide to Grammar, Usage, and Punctuation Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Verbal Judo, Second Edition: The Gentle Art of Persuasion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Four-Hour School Day: How You and Your Kids Can Thrive in the Homeschool Life Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Reviews for A Study Guide for Yoko Kawashima Watkins's "So Far From the Bamboo Grove"
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
A Study Guide for Yoko Kawashima Watkins's "So Far From the Bamboo Grove" - Gale
09
So Far from the Bamboo Grove
Yoko Kawashima Watkins
1986
Introduction
The events in the autobiographical novel So Far from the Bamboo Grove, published in 1986 and still in print, were taken from Yoko Kawashima Watkins's childhood. It took Watkins ten years to write the novel.
When Watkins was young, her father, a Japanese government official, was sent to northern Korea (which was occupied by Japan), where he settled his family. Watkins grew up learning the Korean language and culture while maintaining a grasp of her own Japanese heritage. Later, Russian and Korean armies united against Japan, and along with support from U.S. bombers, forced the Japanese off the Korean peninsula. Watkins's story focuses mainly on her family's journey out of Korea, and on their attempts to reestablish their lives in their war-torn homeland.
So Far from the Bamboo Grove has been both praised and negatively criticized over the years. In 1986, the novel was listed as a Notable Book by the American Library Association. In addition, it received a Best Books for Children designation from the School Library Journal. However, more recently there has been some controversy surrounding Watkins's novel. It has been charged that the novel contains an inaccurate or biased account of history, and the suggested rape scene in the story has also been viewed as offensive. Some parents have even tried to have the book removed from school libraries and curriculums. Most readers, however, defend the novel, stating that it is predominantly a work of fiction, told through the eyes of a traumatized eleven-year-old. For them, this story is a coming-of-age journey.
Author Biography
Yoko Kawashima Watkins, who is of Japanese descent, was born in Manchuria. Although Manchuria is part of China, and sits on China's eastern seaboard, Japan had invaded Manchuria and controlled the area by 1931. Watkins's family was living there in 1933, in Harbin, when she was born. Later, the family moved to Nanam in northern Korea, possibly thinking they might avoid the conflicts that were threatening between the Japanese and Russian armies. Although the family moved, Watkins's father continued to commute the fifty miles to his station in Manchuria and thus was often away from home. The setting of So Far from the Bamboo Grove at the beginning of the story is in Nanam.
As Watkins relates in her novel, when she was eleven, in 1945, it became apparent that Japan was fighting a losing battle in World War II. Her family was warned to leave with just enough supplies and belongings to get them to the port of Pusan on the southern point of the Korean peninsula. After making it to Japan, they discovered that much of their homeland had been destroyed, and they had to survive by eating out of trash cans and earning small amounts of money by selling trinkets door-to-door.
Watkins credits her older sister Ko for encouraging her studies despite the challenges of poverty they faced after their mother died. Watkins would later attend Kyoto University, where she specialized in English. Upon graduation, Watkins worked