"She was going to be the best in the world and live at the top of everything, and she was going to bring her family with her. This is one of the themes of my sister's life."
Lynn, through the eyes of her younger sister Katie, is perfect. Lynn teaches Katie that life is beautiful ("kira-kira" means "glittering"-- it's Katie's first word, which Lynn taught her after many nights of looking up at the stars). Their parents also leave it to Lynn to break difficult news to Katie (and before her first day of school, Lynn tells Katie that she may be called names and treated as different). Katie doesn't want to do anything without Lynn, but when her sister is struck with mysterious illness, Katie has no choice.
The focus of Kira-Kira is the bittersweet sibling relationship, but the book is extraordinary in its exploration of growing up nikkei in the Jim Crow south. In a world divided along the lines of black and white, Katie doesn't know how she fits in. Katie's parents, like the other members of the small Japanese community, work in the chicken hatcheries in town. The hours are long and hard, without even breaks to use the bathroom, and the wealthy owner of the enterprise tries to crush the workers’ attempts to unionize.
I wish these compelling features of the book had more been the focus, but the family issues make this an accessible read.
When I was a kid, all of those political issues would have been totally over my head (or boring to me), so I really liked seeing them through the lens of Katie's rather naive eyes.
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