Review: Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford was a heartbreaking, beautifully told story of family, loyalty, first love, and of belonging neither here nor there.

The hero, Henry, is a Chinese American in Seattle during WWII. He is too Chinese for his white American classmates, but too American to fit in with his Chinese family. He is witness to the evacuation of Japanese Americans to inland camps for their "protection" after Pearl Harbor.

Having grown up in the western states, but far from the western coast, I admit I knew little about how seriously the threat of Japanese attack was taken for the states and towns on the Pacific Coast. I have since visited forts built to protect the Northwest from the Japanese during WWII. This book made the evacuation and containment of Japanese Americans feel even more real to me because it talks about places that I have been and live not far from now.

I am often drawn to stories about mothers and daughters, but rarely to ones about fathers and sons (since I am neither). But this book is for anyone who has navigated the complicated relationships of family, and for anyone who has loved or lost.