Growing-Up Explored in Banana Yoshimoto’s Kitchen Essay -- Yoshimoto K

Growing-Up Explored in Banana Yoshimotos KitchenThe first time I read Kitchen, I knew I was experiencing something very special. Not since my initial reading of Catcher in the Rye have I witnessed such a perceptive look at the joys and pains of growing up. These coming-of-age novels capture our attention with plots that, while twisting and turning in creative, off-beat ways, remain believable. The writers of these novels tell us their stories with a baffling style more exciting than that of textbooks and assigned reading, a style not unlike a good one-sided conversation. Finally, within this great style of writing, the authors inculcate honest insights, often humorous and sometimes poignant, which do not carry a lecturing or authoritative tone. Banana Yoshimoto, as translated by Megan Backus, incorporates these trine elements of a successful coming-of-age novel into Kitchen skillfully. The result is magnificent.To keep a young person interested, an author must weave an interesting baloney. Kitchen is fascinating because the premise of the story is original A Japanese twenty-somethings grandmother dies and is taken in by an employee of her grandmothers favorite flower shop and his transvestite mother. Along the course of the story, the heroine discovers a ire for cooking, the young man dreams a dream with the heroine, and a crazy admirer kills the transvestite mother. In the end, the heroine and the young man realize their love for each other, without rase having shared a passionate kiss. Such a plot is interesting to the average teenager who craves the out-of-the-ordinary she wants escape. Kitchen certainly provides something different, but it does so in a known way. When the heroine Mikage finds out that Yuichis m... ...xperiencing life. When I read Kitchen, I sympathized with Mikages loss of her grandmother. Until now, I still do not truly know how such a loss feels. So, in some ways, to read a coming-of-age novel is an identification with what you ha ve experienced and a preparation for that which has yet to come. Some may argue that Kitchen is interesting just because it is written by a foreigner. Without speaking Japanese and reading the original material, we may not know how close the translation is. I argue that it doesnt matter. No matter from where you have come or how far in life you have gotten, after spending a little time in the Kitchen, you leave behind have learned without feeling you have been taught. In the world of those who are still growing up, that is the best way to learn.Work CitedYoshimoto, Banana. Kitchen. Trans. Megan Backus. NY Washington Square, 1988.