The Review of Contemporary Fiction
Circle K Cycles by Karen Tei YamashitaJason Picone
Karen Tei Yamashita. Circle K Cycles. Coffee House, 2001. 147 pp. Paper: $16.95.
This collection mixes short story with essay, diary with advertisement, and photograph with recipe, for an intriguing blend that mirrors the lives of its fragmented subjects. Yamashita’s visually arresting book concerns the Japanese diaspora in Brazil and their migration back to Japan via a 1990 law allowing descendants of Japanese emigrants to return to their homeland in order to work. Lured back to Japan with promises of wealth and glamorous occupations, these dekasegi (migrant laborers in Japan) quickly discover the drudgery of low-paying, dangerous factory work. Estranged from one homeland by distance and the other by language and memory, dekasegi turn to one another for community and comfort in their few hours of leisure time. Japanese decorum threatens even this respite, as the cultures collide over issues such as noise level, the proper way to sort trash, and public displays of affection. Yamashita explores this cultural terrain through her journal writing and fiction, alternating the two genres even as she inserts graphics and photographs of each culture throughout her book. The deceivingly light fictions of Circle K Cycles gain richness as the short stories begin to overlap and characters reemerge from different points of view. Supplied both in English and Portuguese, Yamashita’s most emblematic story is “Zero Zero One-derful,” a prodigious transcript of three phone conversations that one woman holds concurrently. An advisor to other dekasegi, Maria Mandalena counsels floundering newcomers while also chatting with a friend on another line. The third line is a phone sex service alluded to in the title and Maria effortlessly negotiates her wildly divergent conversations, switching from one to another in the same manner that Yamashita successfully crosses boundaries of genre. Circle K Cycles’s brilliant fusing of forms is perfectly suited to its subject matter, giving insight into the kaleidoscopic lives of dekasegi. [Jason Picone]