New York Times Book Review, December 8, 1991
In “Another Writer’s Beginnings,” the first story in this slender collection by R. A. Sasaki, the Japanese-American narrator recalls how as a child she had entertained the vain hope of becoming a Mouseketeer. She attributes this sense of possibility to sheer obliviousness. But vigilance rather than obliviousness is the prevailing outlook of many of the Japanese-American characters depicted in “The Loom.” In the title story, for instance, a woman who grew up “wearing the two faces of a second-generation child born of immigrant parents” has suppressed her emotions to such an extent that she cannot cry when one of her daughters dies. Only later in her life, when she receives a loom as a gift from another of her daughters, will she be able to weave together the disparate aspects of her cultural identity. Ms. Sasaki, herself a “third-generation San Franciscan,” is especially adept at portraying family attachments as the bridge between different cultures and generations. In “Wild Mushrooms,” for example, a Japanese-American woman living in Japan realizes both the extent and limits of her identification with her Japanese heritage when she accompanies her father on a visit to his old neighborhood in Hiroshima. Unfortunately, while the simplicity of these stories is often elegant and affecting, it can also seem too sketchy. This is particularly true of “First Love,” a laborious and obvious tale of teen-age disillusionment in which Ms. Sasaki’s generally graceful prose lapses into self-evident pronouncements. ―Carol Verderese
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