Introduction

Hello and welcome to my brand-new book review blog!  It's called "Crossing Borders" for a very good reason, since rather than reviewing everything I read, I'm going to focus on those books that deal with the interplay of cultures.

First, a little background:

When I was thirteen, my sister brought home a bunch of poor-quality VHS tapes, all full of a new kind of cartoon straight from Japan.  Though the Internet didn't really have a lot of information available on the subject--this was a while ago!--I soon learned that this was called anime, and that it was hugely popular in Japan.  I was absolutely hooked.  Sailor Moon, Fushigi Yugi, Dragonball Z...they were all fascinating, and I spent hours watching them and trying to decipher bits and pieces of the Japanese language.

The language was unintelligible at first, but very soon I started to pick up a word here, and a phrase there, and I knew that I wanted to study Japanese, more than anything.  Four years later, I signed up for Japanese 101.  I also took Chinese 101...for no real reason but that it seemed interesting.  That began my love affair with Asia.

Anyway, I studied the language, history, and culture of both these East Asian nations, but they were so strange and alien to me (a pretty isolated American kid from Connecticut) that I had a hard time understanding why people in Japan and China did what they did.  Then I started reading the literature.

From Japan, I read Natsume Soseki, Tanizaki Junichiro, Oe Kenzaburo, and Yukio Mishima.

From China, I read Li Bai, The Analects, plays, and opera from the wide range of history.

And many, many more.

I really believe that literature can help open our eyes to what we're missing or misunderstanding about the actions of others.  If more people read multicultural books, we might not have the problems we have in the world today.  I want to use this blog to study books that involve a clash of cultures as a major feature in the story.  By reading these works and analyzing the clashes through the different theories of culture, I can see how authors treat these differences and whether they are sensitive to the cultural qualities that drive conflict between individuals.