Monica Sone, the memoir’s first-person protagonist, is born Kazuko Itoi to two first-generation Japanese immigrant parents. Though she has “Oriental eyes” that reveal her ethnicity, Sone grows to be five feet six inches, far taller than is customary for a Japanese girl (238). She has a hearty appetite and resents having to go to Issei gatherings where she is expected to eat slowly and restrain herself from second helpings.

Sone, a Nisei who is granted the American citizenship that is denied to her parents, presents herself as an emphatically American girl. She describes how compared to her statuesque cousin, Yoshiye, in Japan, she was a “tomboy” who “rustled and hustled around as I pleased” (92). Not only does Sone refuse the mannerisms of the ideal Japanese “ojoh-san,” she actively fights it, both in her impulse to beat Mrs. Matsui’s model daughter, Yaeko, and her actual beating of her cousin, Yoshiye (28). This trope of a kinetic young woman who wants to leap into life rather than behave like a restrained doll aligns Sone not only with Americana, but with ideas of a modern American woman that emerged after the First World War. Even within the climate of increasing hostility to people of Japanese ethnicity, Sone desires the opportunities afforded to her Caucasian peers and sets her sights on college.