Journal #9 Wild Meat and Bully Burgers

On your own blog, tell why your novel relates to cultural/ethnic roots and identity. Give specific examples from your reading.

Brief Summary of Story:

Wild Meat and Bully Burgers is about Lovey Nariyoshi, a young girl who is trying to find her own identity. She lives on the Big Island of Hawaii with her Japanese family. They aren't like those rich families who own a huge business or anything, in fact... they are the total opposite. Lovey is just a typical girl who goes to school, follows the demands of her parents, and has a best friend named Jerry. In other words, Lovey has lived out her culture for the past years of her life and changes everything up just to find where she's at.

"Specific Examples"

• I don't tell anyone, not even Jerry, how ashamed I am of my pidgin English. Ashamed of my mother and father, the food we eat, chicken luau with can spinach and tripe stew. The place we live, down the house lots in the Hicks Homes that all look alike except for the angle of the house from the street. The car we drive, my father's brown Land Rover without the back window. The clothes we wear, sometimes we have to wear the same pants in the same week and the same shoes until it breaks. Don't have no choice. Ashamed of my aunties and uncles at baby luaus, yakudoshis, and mochi pounding parties. "Eh, bradda Larry, bring me one nada Primo, brah. One cold one fo' real kine. I rey-day, I rey-day, no woray, brah. Uncap that sucka and come home to Uncle Stevie."

• Ashame too of all my cousins, the way they talk and act dumb, like how they like Kikaida Man and "Ho, brah, you seen Kikaida Man kick Rainbow Man's a** in front Hon Sport at the Hilo Shopping Center? Ho, brah, and I betchu Godzilla kick King Kong's a** too. Betchu ten dollas, brah, two fur balls kicking ass in downtown Metropolis, nah, downtown Hilo, brah."

• And my grandma. Her whole house smells like mothballs, not just in the closets but in every drawer too. And her pots look a million years old with dents all over. Grandma must know every recipe with mustard cabbage in it. She can quote from the Bible for everything you do in a day, Walks everywhere she goes downtown Kaunakakai, sucks fish eyes and eats the parsley from our plates at Midnight Inn. And nobody looks or talks like a haole. Or eats like a haole. Nobody says nothing the way Mr. Harvey tells us to practice talking in class.

• Mother smokes Parliaments. We're not to point at the cigarette machine and say, "That the kine Mommy smokes," if Grandma is around. I like when Mother and me sit on the porch to pick fleas off of Melba and Spam, the two black poi dogs we found in the ditch by Grandma's house.

• The macadamia nut picking comes easy when we first get there. I stand up and bend over easily for each unhusked nut that I drop into the bag. Picking nuts standing up and bending over. Easy when you first get there.

"View"

This novel relates to cultural/ethnicity roots because it shows what Lovey and her family do during the day. For example, she says that she picks macadamia nuts in the field and pick fleas off of the dogs. It cleary shows they're personality and where they come from.. Like the way they talk, what they eat, and how they dress. The specific details really show that they are a very close family who likes to spend some quality time with each other. Doing so, they all act alike, for instance.. they all speak pidgin. She is ashamed of her culture because she likes to compare herself to the haoles. Her English teacher, Mr. Harvey, wants the best for his students. That is why he forces them to speak in proper sentences. He continuously tells them that if they keep on talking in crooked sentences, then they won't get anywhere in life. Lovey doesn't want that to happen to her so throughout the story she tries to become a little bit more haole everyday, which upsets her best friend Jerry because he thinks that being yourself is the number one policy.

Overall, Lovey wants to be a different person. She wants to be a haole.