On Karen Tei Yamashita’s iconic LA novel.

BY CHRIS DOYLE

From: chireviewofbooks.com

In support of their publication of Karen Tei

Yamashita’s new work of nonfiction, Letters to Memory, Coffee House Press has reissued three of Yamashita’s novels in beautiful new jackets: Through the Arc of the Rainforest, Brazil-Maru, and Tropic of Orange, which is the subject of this review. Originally published in 1997 and already considered a canonical L.A. novel, its eclectic and feverish prose still speaks with a freshness on contemporary concerns around migration, identity, globalization and apocalypse.

 

Tropic of Orange weaves together a collection of seven narratives over seven days, taking place in Mexico and Los Angeles, and its most immediately striking feature is the diversity of its cast. Whilst there is no central character, the sections concerning Gabriel, a Chicano news reporter, are narrated in the first person and it his through him that the strands of narrative interweave.

Alongside Gabriel is Emi, a Japanese-American TV executive and Gabriel’s girlfriend, who volubly represents a postmodern perspective and undermines Gabriel’s tendencies to romanticize and crave simplicity. Next there’s Buzzworm, one of Gabriel’s contacts and self-proclaimed “Angel of Mercy”, who walks the streets, perpetually plugged into his pocket radio, trying to keep some sort of peace.

In Mexico, we find Rafaela, employed by Gabriel to refurbish and maintain his folly; a house to which he will probably never retire, and site of the orange tree, planted on the Tropic of Cancer, which gives the novel its title. Back in L.A. is Rafaela’s husband Bobby, a Chinese immigrant who speaks Spanish and masquerades as Vietnamese, caught between his overpowering work ethic and the impulse to enjoy the life his work has built. Read Rest of Review Here