Kira-Kira

The family gets ready to move from Iowa to Georgia. They spend the day loading up Uncle’s truck, planning to leave early the next morning. As they load, Uncle pulls out a chess set, announces he is the best Japanese chess player in America, and challenges Lynn to a match. She beats him three times in a row. Watching the matches, Katie reports, “When Lynn beat him, I kept my face blank, but inside I was cheering for her" (15). Uncle storms out of the house and spits angrily.

Katie reflects that Mother is a delicate person who likes things to be calm and quiet. Father loves Mother deeply and allows her to manage their money. Mother wants her daughters to go to Japan eventually to learn how to be feminine.

Though the family is supposed to leave at dawn, they end up leaving at dusk the next day. As they drive, the two girls cry, complaining that there are things packed away in the truck that they want to hold during the ride. First, the girls ride with Uncle, but they cry so much that Uncle makes them ride with their parents. When the girls continue to cry, the parents stop and flip a coin. Uncle loses, so the girls have to ride in his truck. He makes up silly songs involving the girl’s names—the only way he can get them to stop crying.

On the trip to Georgia, they go through two large cities: Saint Louis, Missouri, and Nashville, Tennessee. In Saint Louis, they stop for supplies. Their parents briefly leave the girls as they go off to run some errands. The girls pretend that they are grownups, crossing and swinging their legs and pretending to smoke cigarettes, but making sure that their mother does not see them.

In Nashville, they spend the night in a motel. The clerk is a woman who talks on the phone the entire time she waits on them. She makes them pay $2 extra and makes them sleep in one of the back rooms, which she says are for Indigenous Americans and Mexicans. When Katie objects, “We’re not Indian […] We’re not Mexican,” (27) the woman retorts rudely. Katie asks her dad as they leave the motel office why he didn’t beat up the clerk.

That night, Uncle pulls out a marble chess set he purchased in a pawn shop along the way. After spending some time in the bathroom practicing, Uncle plays Lynn again. Though he makes his moves very slowly, and Lynn makes her moves quickly, Lynn still beats her uncle.

The next day, driving through Georgia, they see many things they have never seen before. Each town has signs boasting about its unique identity. Eventually, they arrive at Chesterfield, which is going to be their new hometown. They drive down a road to Uncle’s house where his wife and twin sons, David and Daniel, come out to meet them. That night, as the sisters lie on the ground looking at the moon, Katie makes a list of everything she misses about Iowa. She also does not like the fact that her parents are going to be working constantly and she will not get to see them as much as before.

Their small and sparse apartment in Chesterfield is in a one-story U-shaped building. From the beginning, Mother dislikes it. The girls share a bedroom and the living room also serves as their mother’s sewing area. The sisters have to play outside, because there is no room inside to play. Lynn immediately becomes the leader of the neighborhood children, but she is always includes her sister, regardless of whom she is playing with.

When school starts, Katie does not want to go to kindergarten, so she stays home under the care of another Japanese mother, Mrs. Kanagawa. Katie watches for her sister to come home from school every day. When the next school year approaches, Lynn and Mother prepare Katie for her first day of first grade. Lynn takes Katie aside and tries to explain why people will ignore her, though she finds it difficult to explain the prejudice Katie will encounter. Lynn says if anybody gives Katie a bad time, let Lynn know and she’ll take care of them.

Katie wakes up early on the first day of school because her mother has put pin curls in her hair. This has made her hair incredibly curly. Katie is distressed at first, but decides that she actually looks pretty. Mother puts her in a yellow chiffon dress rather than the typical jumpers most kids wear to school. Katie feels isolated and alone on first day. Since her name does not sound Japanese, one girl asks her what her original name is and Katie responds, “‘Natsuko.’ That was my middle name. It means ‘summer’—when I was born. My sister’s middle name was Akiko, which means ‘autumn’—when she was born.” (54). At one point, Katie’s teacher criticizes her for not knowing an answer, comparing her to the very smart Lynn.

Mother gives birth to Samson (Sammy). The sisters love to take care of him, rushing home from school to play with him. Mother goes back to work at the poultry processing plant soon after giving birth. Sometimes the girls take Sammy out to lie on the ground with them and look up the Milky Way, when Katie asks all kinds of questions assuming Lynn knows all the answers. When Bera-Bera, the stuffed animal Katie loved and slept with constantly, disappears during Sammy’s first year of life, she doesn’t even miss it because Sammy has taken its place.