Say leaves his reader with this uneasiness of identity. She and Joseph develop a shared empathy over their feeling of un-belonging, their struggle to construct an identity in a culture that doesn’t feel to be their own. Joseph notices Masako’s American English accent and invites her out to have tea, which they both take with milk (an uncommon practice in mid-1900s Japan). Masako rebels, finds her way to Osaka, acquires a job as a translator in a department store (thanks to her English and Japanese skills), and eventually marries Joseph (a Shanghainese banker who was raised by English parents). Once in Japan, Masako’s parents expect her to follow traditional Japanese customs: she is to learn fine crafts, like flower arranging and tea ceremony procedures, and marry a suitable man chosen by her parents. The protagonist, Masako, is about to finish high school when her parents decide to move back to pre-WWII Japan, after raising her in the San Francisco Bay Area. In Tea with Milk, Say explores identity in a way that most children identity books do not: he examines the struggle of a member of the Japanese diaspora to return to her ancestral homeland, rather than her struggle to assimilate to American culture.

This tension reminded me of Allen Say’s 1999 picture book, Tea with Milk. And, although I have always asserted the identity of an American of mixed Asian heritage when asked where are you from, this experience pushed me to confront the tension of being viewed as a foreigner in the United States and feeling like a gaijin in Japan. Wherever I’ve travelled or resided prior to this trip I’ve been identified as Asian of some kind-despite being four generation removed from Japanese émigrés, my skin and facial features mask my American cultural identity -this was, however, a new type of tension, one in which my two identities were inverted. As a Yonsei (fourth-generation Japanese-American), this trip brought me to view my conception of my identity in a new way. Amidst the crowded streets and alleyways of Shinjuku and Shibuya, I began to feel an unsettling feeling-a mix of calm comfort at odds with a glint of guilt. It was a trip of sunshine and strong, brisk spring winds. The cherry blossoms were just beginning to bloom and this was my first time in the country for more than a couple days. A few weeks ago, I returned from a quick 5-day trip to Tokyo.

Tea with milk by allen say