Banana

Product Information

When she published her first novel Moonlight Shadow she was a student at Nihon University Art College and was waitressing at a country club. The novel was a hit and she received the Izumi Kyoka Prize from her university. She has also won the Umitsubame First Novel Prize and the 16th Izumi Kyoka Literary Prize. Wong has created a real barnstormer of a novel that deserves to be on several of the awards list. It’s definitely getting a place in my Top Ten.' If These Books Could Talk For young people, particularly, this book is a must-read. It is one of those experiences that forces the reader to learn more about the people they never get to know in their communities. What a wonderful new discovery it can be to accept people different from ourselves, into our lives. Of course it counts for both immigrants and old inhabitants alike.

The writing style is notable as the book is largely written from Xing Li's perspective. As an 11-year-old girl, she writes in a rather childlike manner, commenting very bluntly on the things around her. This allows for a lot of observational humour about Chinese culture to creep in, which is hilarious to me now as a mixed-race British Chinese woman. Sometimes, on long car trips with LSW, we compete for who can make up the absurdest micro-history title, following the pattern “X: The Y that Changed the World”, where X is the name of an object and Y is the category to which the object belongs. I remember suggesting X=Mauve, and then found out later there is really a book about this, proving that politics is not the only endeavor where satire has become obsolete.) Last, but not least, I wish Koeppel had used footnotes to cite his source material. I suppose he deemed them too “academic” for the average reader or something. Instead, his sources (both major and minor) are dropped into the narrative with an audible CLUNK! ���

Keep in touch

It is interesting though as length of book seems to play a large part in whether they are turquoise/purple or gold/white rather than actual content from what I can see in some of the other scheme books. so you could technically end up with a long chapter book as white but with very simple text in it whilst a complex storyline and harder words could be seen more as purple if it is shorter. Most of her novels present an independent woman as a protagonist who overcomes the tragedies and traumas of life. How about the notion that the banana was the fruit referred to in ancient texts about the Garden of Eden. The climate in the Fertile Crescent was not conducive to apples. And there is some softness in the translations of ancient writings. The forbidden fruit was called a fig, which is also what the banana was called. And really, doesn’t it seem a more fitting shape for the job? Which makes it all the more ironic that bananas are essentially asexual. They do not breed. The fruit we eat today came from cloned plants. Mass-consumption bananas has always come from plants that do not propagate themselves, but require man’s intervention. I was at a book launch, in a book shop, last week and while waiting for the author to appear I scanned the bookshelves and spotted this.

Banana Yoshimoto is a Japanese contemporary writer famous for her best novel Kitchen that sold more than one million copies worldwide. A Hong Kong film and a TV show also feature this novel’s story. Banana received the 39th edition Best Newcomer Artists award for this novel on Japanese government’s recommendation. One might describe Tsugumi as afrail, sharp-tongued girl because of her horrid attitude, and profanities but behind all this insolence is a strong, fearless human being. The book is published by the independent book publisher Legend Press who impressively had two of their books on the 2015 Women’s Prize shortlist Moonlight follows a similar storyline of grief and loss. Satsuki, a young girl and Hiragi, another main character, both lose their loved ones to death. Both characters try to pull each other out of the destitute and sorrow. All in all, both stories successfully transport us into the lives of young and lonely Japanese city girls. I think it's pretty depressing that this book came out in 2007--nearly 2 decades ago--and none of the problems regarding the monoculture of bananas, the problems with corporations owning GMOs for food billions of people rely on for food, the diseases in banana fruits, etc. have been resolved. I am now pretty convinced that, thanks to capitalism and greed, we are going to lose bananas within the next few decades.

The unconventional story of three young women bewitched into a mysterious and spiritual sleepwalking, sleeplessness, and haunted sleep triggered by the death of a loved one. The stories revolve around dead lovers, unrequited love, or unfaithful affairs. So you get the idea, lots of info about something most of us never gave, well, a fig about. It is a fun read and you will find yourself saying (or thinking, if you don’t want to make the person next to you on the subway slowly edge away) “I did not know that.” Given that there are existential threats abroad to the common banana, and that we are not yet ready with a cross-bred version that is resistant to those threats, we should probably do what we can to appreciate the banana before it…um…splits. A cousin to this genre is the micro-history on man-made constructs and other non-commodities including, but not limited to, home, cleanliness, color, reading, marriage, wives (but, interestingly, not husbands), cancer, rabies, sex, zero, infinity, rats, swearing, corpses, and many more. Jadi, Saudara-saudara sekalian, pohon pengetahuan yang terlarang di surga itu bukan pohon apel. Tapi pisang. Ulangi kata-kata saya, PI-SANG! Hanya karena kesalahan penerjemahan bibel saja membuat orang awam jadi mengira buah yang menggoda Hawa itu adalah buah apel.

According to Banana, writing comes to her “almost as natural as breathing.” In the literary societies of Japan, Banana is known as Healing-Kei, i.e. a wise healer. Wow. This is a Feb 2019 update: I just read an article that confirms that the banana is at great risk. I thought the author of this book was trying to give a dramatic spin to his work, but apparently it’s all very serious! Here is the article: https://amp.ft.com/content/74fb67b8-2... The story focuses on Xing-Li, a teenaged girl, who'd lost her parents, and, with her brother, was forced to go and live with her Mum's family and the super-Chinese granny (old skool). She serves as a surface to Maria’s incessant thoughts and apprehensions. She is suffering from disabling disease, falls ill frequently, and perhaps will die soon. Nobody scolds her for whatever she does. She calls others ‘dimwits,’ ‘morons,’ and ‘assholes.’ Impeccably observed, often hilarious, and deeply moving... pitch-perfect.’ David Henry Hwang, Tony Award-winning writer.

The Life of a Banana tells the story of Xing Li, a British born Chinese girl. The story begins with the tragic death of her mother, meaning Xing and her brother are forced to live with their super rich and super strict grandmother. They've never had much of a relationship with her and they're dreading going to live with her and their aunt and uncle. You could read Jane Eyre and (some people might) enjoy it just as a book but when you study it for GCSE you are bored to tears (in my case) trying to work out what the author was thinking of when she was describing a picture on the wall and what it was supposed to symbolise. personally I am still adamant it wasn't supposed to symbolise anything but my teacher didn't agree. So being read and understood but at 2 very different levels. This is how the author leads with his arse into a discussion of the “banana massacre” in Colombia in 1928, when the United Fruit Company violently put down a strike. Now, I just have to say that there are writers who can pull this sort of indulgent reminiscence off, but Koeppel isn’t one of them.