Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet: The international bestseller and word-of-mouth sensation

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In an interview with NPR, Jamie Ford discusses writing Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet and his own family's stories of assimilation, including how his great grandfather (a Chinese man named Min Chung) came to America and decided to adopt the surname Ford. After the devastation of Pearl Harbour, the US government decides to send all the people of Japanese decent to live in internment camps until the war is over. They speak only Cantonese, and although they want Henry to be only American, they follow the old ways of their Chinese community. He then travels with the lunch lady to serve meals at Camp Harmony, a temporary internment facility on the Western Washington Fairgrounds in Puyallup, Washington, where he sees her. Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet is a beautiful, fascinating, tender and moving story from beginning to end.

She makes it her mission to match cusomers with the special something that they are missing, a talisman to bring them what their heart desires. See, Jamie Ford came up with the idea for his debut novel, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, from a story his father told about growing up during World War II. And I despise Orson Scott Card, who helped get this book written, for his stalwart work on behalf of homophobia.This is probably where the sensationalism comes into play as they claimed they were locked up in concentration camps. A dual time narrative, set in 1942 and 1986 – in Seattle, USA, with Henry Lee as the main character. I knew nothing about the events in these communities; I found it fascinating and feel this novel really highlights this through its story. And because I believe readers—lovers of books, wherever they live, are the best kind of people—curious and compassionate, creative and filled with boundless hope.

Doing this while an ongoing war has intensified panic and fear Henry is lucky to find two mentors - a Black man and a White woman - who allow him the space and support he needs to become a liberal American-Chinese adult father. This is an entertaining and often illuminating tale that no doubt will be appearing at a cinema near you soon. They have the loveliest gifts, and they sell used books, where I’ve purchased some wonderful books over the years.With his friend, a local jazz musician named Sheldon, he also visits her in the Minidoka internment camp in Idaho. It has been boarded up for decades, but now the new owner has made an incredible discovery: the belongings of Japanese families, left when they were rounded up and sent to internment camps during World War II. This could have been a wonderful historical novel but it ended up being a cute love story and perhaps I expected too much from the book in the first place and therefore was disappointed with the read.

If you’re looking for more things that have spilled out of my brain, I have steampunk storiess in The End is Nigh, The End is Now, and The End Has Come (The Apocalypse Triptych). Although I’ve seen Japanese written in English before, it was refreshing to see Cantonese too, though for readers unfamiliar with the language, the words might not be intuitive to pronounce. I so enjoyed seeing the boy Henry was (in the 1940s) interspersed with more modern chapters (1980s) so I also viewed the man he became. Henry is a Chinese-American boy who lives in Chinatown, Seattle and is close friends with the only other non-white student at his school. This is a rare book find for me as a closer look into the Japanese and Chinese American citizens and the bigotry and hatred they endured, because the country thought any could be spies.

In an interview featured in the ten year anniversary edition of the book, Ford opens up about the inspiration for the novel. Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet' is a love story of many things - Seattle, families and people in cultural transition, letting go of beloved traditions, an innocent romance between a boy and a girl - while it also quietly reflects on the failures and stresses behind 'multiculturalism'. The experience of Japanese-American citizens caught stateside in the wake of Pearl Harbor has become a dusty footnote to the conflict.

It starts out slow - but not slow in the sense who feel like you are waiting for paint to dry - but slow in the "This is really going somewhere" kind of way.

It meant he had to communicate in sign language with his parents, except on occasion when he had to translate for them. Among those belongings, Henry is hoping to find one specific memory which connects him to the love of his youth, the Japanese-American girl, Keiko Okabe.