Characteristic About Hiromi Goto\'s Book,

Characteristic about Hiromi Goto's book, Chorus of Mushrooms, is the unique presentation of the immigration phenomenon, from the subjective view points of three women. Awarded the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book in the Caribbean and Canadian Region, Chorus of Mushrooms focuses on three generations of women: the eighty-year-old Naoe, her daughter Keiko and the granddaughter Muriel. Among the numerous motifs present in the book, an increased attention should be granted to the immigration motif.

Five-year-old Naoe and her family were forced out of their home and thrown into the world in search of a new life. The need for e new life has taken Naoe to numerous towns, cities and even countries, eventually leading her to Canada at the age of sixty. The immigration motif is relevant to the Chorus of Mushrooms as it portraits the elements that define a large part of the population. Just as Naoe, most immigrants leave their houses with the hope of finding a better life. Some find it, while others don't. But what unites this large mass of immigrants is their constant longing for the places and the people they left behind, for the things they grew up with and for the things that first gave meaning to the word home. Also, similar to Naoe, most immigrants share the reticence for the new communities and their desire to preserve their roots.

This subjective presentation reveals the different positions taken by grandmother, daughter and granddaughter in relating to and accepting the new territories, cultures, language and people. The subjectivism of the novel takes the immigration phenomenon out of its demographic and political context to look at it through the eyes of those leaving their homes. The immigration statistics are translated into life experiences that define the individual. The immigration motif is presented from a subjective view point to aid the reader see the issue from a different perspective that focuses on the life experiences provided by those who felt the effects of immigration.

Subjectivity of the Immigration Motif

First of all, the immigration motif is presented from a subjective point-of-view because the book by its nature is subjective. Author Hiromi Goto was born in Japan and at the age of three, her family immigrated to Canada. The following eight years of Goto's life were spent on the west coast of British Columbia; after that, her family moved to Nanton, Alberta. Here, her father started a business of a mushroom farm, hence the title of the novel.

Then, the immigration motif is a subjective one as it is depicted through the eyes of three generations of women who emigrated from Japan to Canada. Eighty-year-old Naoe has an increased recollection of her years in Japan. She desires to maintain her memories of the Japanese culture, civilization and language alive and she is quite reticent to the foreign country's customs. Naoe's daughter Keiko has limited recollection of the Japanese culture and language, but does not desire to maintain these recollections alive. As such, she is interested in integrating herself and her mother and daughter into the new country. Muriel, the third and youngest generation only speaks English; she didn't grow up with a Japanese mentality because her parents did their best to leave their cultural heritage behind and assimilate the new culture.

Through Naoe's eyes, immigration is viewed as a curse, a much unwelcome event that has forced her to estrange from Japan. Not only that doesn't she like the new country, she would make no effort to integrate herself within the community. Despite the fact that she herself admits she can understand and speak English, she stubbornly refuses to communicate in other language than Japanese. "I speak my words, speak my words, and I say them all out loud. I yell and sing and mutter and weep from my seat of power. I could speak the other [English] [...], but my lips refuse and my tongue swells in revolt."

The eighty-year-old woman is more upset since her daughter does not engage in conversations with her in their native language, nor does she seem interested in preserving her Japanese roots. Naoe does not understand Keiko's behaviour and she even calls her daughter "a child from my heart, a child from my body, but not from my mouth." The mouth is here a very important object since it is used both for communicating and eating.