Growing Up In A Floating World

Cynthia Kadohata is a Japanese American fiction writer.She is the only Japanese American writer who has won both Newbery Medal and National Book Award for Young People's Literature,and her multicultural novels for children aged 9-14 deal with important themes of growth.Each of Kadohata's children's works explores issues related to multiculturalism from a variety of perspectives,highlighting current and historical experiences of Japanese Americans,as well as the heterogeneity among Asian American communities.This dissertation is the first to conduct a holistic and systematic study of the 8 multicultural children's novels published by Kadohata since the beginning of the 21st century.Drawing on theories of developmental psychology and psychoanalysis,it explores the themes of growth in Kadohata's children's works.Whether it is a novel about the daily lives of children or one set during wartime,the core themes are expressed through loss/suffering,family relationships and empowerment.When protagonists start the journey of growth and exploration of identities,these elements work together to constitute the background of personal maturity and provide a source of intellectual development.Moreover,the dissertation examines the uniqueness of Kadohata's works in the dual frameworks of 21st century American children's literature and Asian American literature,revealing topics of universal significance regarding children's developmental changes.Hence,her works help to break down cultural barriers faced by child readers of different ethnicities and backgrounds,encouraging them to abandon the dualistic thinking of "us" versus "them" in a globalized and diverse "post-identity era",drawing their attention to common topics related to the destiny of children.Most distinctively,the dissertation provides an innovative interpretation of the“floating woRld" in Kadohata's works for children.By using the title of the novel The Floating World,a book written for Kadohata's adult readers as an image describing the children's world in her works for child readers,the dissertation adopts a unique perspective into the world of her children's fiction.A "floating world" as an underlying panorama for children characters imbues Kadohata's novels for children with a thoughtful dimension different from the everyday world.The changing,flowing and uncertain "floating world" denotes a marginalized space parallel to scenarios in which protagonists are involuntarily involved as "the other" due to his/her ethnicity,as well as a milieu parallel to the world of daily life that he/she cannot choose.This milieu is a disconnection from their lived experiences,shaped by political,cultural and economic reasons.The concept of "floating world",a parallel space,therefore not only deepens target readers' understanding in the mixing of cultures and races in today's world,but also reflects the real-life situation faced by children in the 21st century.Furthermore,it responds to the needs of young readers in the affective domain,especially when they are in a foreign land and find themselves in an extremely distressful and difficult situation.This dissertation is divided into three parts:introduction,body(including five chapters)and conclusion.The introductory part centers on a literature review,research topics,significance and methodology.The first chapter is a study that analyzes how Cynthia Kadohata is positioned within the framework of a multicultural author writing about multicultural characters,focusing on the uniqueness of her children's novels.First of all,in her first novel The Floating World,Kadohata presents the unconventional writing and portrayal of Japanese-Americans,making her a distinctive member of the third generation Japanese-American writers.In her work,the "sense of place" with postmodern characteristics emphasizes"rootlessness",which is fundamentally different from her contemporary Japanese-American writers who embrace "rootedness" in their writings highlighting "identity in location”.The floating world,therefore,as a representation of this "sense of place",has constructed a special physical and spiritual meaning for her children's works.Secondly,the distinctive features of Kadohata's multicultural children's novels are reflected in the fact that compared with other Asian American literary works aiming at "Asianness" or "Japaneseness",her writing shines in the issues of universal significance concerning children's growth such as love,courage,hope,and security.Thirdly,in the process of presenting the impact of ethnic culture on her observation,thinking and judgment in a mild narrative manner,Kadohata does not make a point of criticizing politics,and does not limit her work to bitter accusations of negative events.Her writing manner allows her exploration of multiculturalism to be widely circulated and accepted among students of different backgrounds both in and outside the classroom,helping child readers to understand the differences from a broader perspective.The second chapter takes Kira-Kira and The Thing about Luck as examples to explain the themes of growth in Japanese-American families that preserve ethnic cultural heritage.In Kadohata's first children's novel,Kira-Kira,the Japanese American protagonist has to regain her strength from the pain of losing her family member.The Thing about Luck features a Japanese American girl experiencing her empowerment by helping her family to accomplish a harvesting task that seems beyond her ability.Chapter 3 mainly discusses issues faced by children in diverse families that are broken or incomplete for one reason or another.Half a World Away unfolds a story in which an orphan from Romania grows when he learns to accept the American culture and integrate into his adoptive family,underlining that children are maturing in the process of handling important needs and emotional relationships,as well as making life-changing decisions.Checked,being Kadohata's first novel about youth sport,addresses how personal development in the pre-teen years depends on considering and thinking about one's situation on the way to empowerment.Chapter 4 centers on Kadohata's historical fiction written for children set in World War II.Weedflower shows a girl's maturation while living in a Japanese American internment camp as she tries to make sense of her future when struggling with loneliness and depressions.Kadohata celebrates the individual's ability to overcome difficulties against all odds despite the fact that young protagonists suffer from impermanence in a floating world.In her most recent novel A Place to Belong published in 2019,Kadohata takes on the story of a Japanese American girl whose family relinquish their citizenship after World War II to go to Japan.The protagonist has to achieve her personal development in a place that is her ancestors' home but which she has not previously been to.While responding to the social and political realities of today' s American society,Kadohata intends to share with pre-teen readers the mental processes of adapting and thinking when faced with a crisis.Chapter 5 analyzes the protagonists' transformation during the Vietnam War.Cracker!The Best Dog in Vietnam constructs emotional clues between human characters and animal characters in the story,through which the cruelty of wars and the empowerment of characters' maturity are revealed.In A Million Shades of Gray,Kadohata for the first time takes the narrative landscape away from the American scene.The novel attaches importance to the impacts of wars on children,offering to readers a demonstration of how people can do their best under adverse circumstances and pursue their goals in the process of exploring new experiences in a parallel space.Kadohata,in all of her children's novels,forms the narratives to approach various Asian American cultural issues in all their complexity.The dissertation's assertion is that Kadohata's novels for children are consistent with the early 21st century trend within the US facing a "Big Divide" against the current backdrop of several intense political,social and cultural divergences.Addressing the issues of immigration,refugees,ethnic minority groups,racism,and diversity,the author does not stop at the reality that is extremely disturbing to her,which is inflamed with oppositional attitudes that can break out in hostility and violence.On the contrary,she focuses on major issues of universal significance that concern children's growth in her multicultural literary works.Kadohata's view is that individuals have the opportunity to choose to grow even when faced with loss and suffering.When students are in a world of disintegration and hostility,Kadohata provides them with a road map for finding goals in their lives,helps them enhance their resilience,and encourages them to continue to move forward on the path to realizing the meaning of their lives.Even in the face of unchangeable reality,children can still achieve maturity in a "floating world" and gain strength or initiative.Kadohata's children's novels always take care of the most important life issues of children.As children eventually grow into adults,their immaturity will gradually fade away.Regardless of a child reader' s background or identity,Kadohata's novels shed "Kira-Kira"(something positive and hopeful)on a target reader as a whole person,rather than just as a child,offering her readers themselves an opportunity to continue to grow.