Strawberry Road Author:Yoshimi Ishikawa Wide-eyed and vigilant, Yoshimi Ishikawa steps off his immigrant ship in the summer of 1965 to join his brother Daiku on a strawberry farm near Pomona, California. He is an expectant teenager, eager to get his hands on the buxom blondes and easy money he's heard so much about. He finds instead a run-down shack in an endless field and his brother... more »'s willful, sometimes blind, determination to "make it" in America. Ishi embarks on a search for free love and community while his brother tries to plant economic roots in the shifting sands of rural California--among the Mexican immigrants and the first- and second-generation Japanese settlers, some still bearing scars from the internment camps. Gradually, Ishi fashions himself a new life. At school, his Japanese-American buddy Frankie Noda initiates him into the do's and don'ts of sports, study, and American dating. On the farm, he watches as his brother's boss and mentor becomes hopelessly entangled with a quack Japanese-American telephone guru. On the road, he finds himself sitting Zen with the hippies of Haight-Ashbury and discovers first love with an older Japanese divorcee. Through his experiences he develops a love for soil, water, and the farming life; a nose for the nearly imperceptible shifts in California's weather; and a new appreciation for the vivid seasons of his homeland. Along the way he creates unforgettable portraits of the heroes and anti-heroes of the Japanese-American dream: the retired "blanket man" who lives alone in a hut with 60 years of savings in his mattress; the boisterous Mexicans next door with their hideouts to escape the immigration authorities; Sensei, the Christian antiwar minister and our hero's mentor; the itinerant right-wing calligrapher who likes to sell to unsuspecting Americans framed Chinese slogans that read: "Revere the Emperor, Banish the Barbarian." Ishikawa's account of his cultural and sentimental education, of his personal disillusionment and triumphs, is funny, ribald, and sometimes discomfiting. Winner of the prestigious Ohya Nonfiction Award and an enormous best-seller in Japan, Strawberry Road is a vivid reminder that the American melting pot is still stewing in unpredictable ways.« less