Belonging, Bigotry, and Identity Theme Analysis

Through the lens of best friends Henry and Keiko’s experiences growing up in Seattle during the Second World War, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet examines how rigid ideas about identity can cause harm, particularly to children from immigrant families. Both Henry (who is a first-generation Chinese American) and Keiko (who is a second-generation Japanese American) are plagued by the perception that they’re neither truly American nor truly members of their families’ cultures of origin. But in reality, Henry is genuinely American and Chinese; Keiko is genuinely American and Japanese. Through their stories, the novel argues that identity shouldn’t be viewed as an either/or proposition, because such a rigid view of identity harms both individuals and society as a whole, as well as lays the foundation for even more pronounced bigotry.

The novel introduces this kind of bigotry through Keiko’s and Henry’s experiences of not being “enough” to merit certain identity labels. For example, when Henry visits Keiko at Camp Harmony, the first internment camp for Japanese Americans to which her family has been forced to relocate, she says: “It’s so funny. They throw us in here because we’re Japanese, but I’m nisei—second generation. I don’t even speak Japanese. At school they teased me for being a foreigner. In here, some of the other kids, the issei—the first generation—they tease me because I can’t speak the language, because I’m not Japanese enough.” Keiko’s observation that she is Japanese enough to be sent to an internment camp, yet too American to fit in there, highlights the unreasonable expectations she is up against from both sides of this ethnic divide. Henry’s own experience as a first-generation American born of Chinese parents also underscores how poisonous national identity can be when it requires individuals to prove that they deserve it. When Henry’s father announces that he wants Henry to finish his schooling in China, Henry imagines “staying at his uncle’s house [in Canton], which was probably more of a shack, and being teased by the locals for not being Chinese enough. The opposite of here, where he wasn’t American enough. He didn’t know which was worse.” Henry even feels jealous of Keiko—although she’s in an internment camp, at least she has a sense of belonging within her own family. Both Henry and Keiko were born in America—in the same hospital, even—but the culture around them nonetheless insists that they aren’t American enough.

Henry’s experiences at school demonstrate how such rigid, polarized ideas of identity perpetuate bigotry at the societal level. Henry is tormented by a classmate named Chaz Preston. When he encounters Chaz vandalizing the abandoned Panama Hotel in the Japanese neighborhood of Seattle, he tells Chaz to “go home.” Chaz responds: “This is my home, this is the United States of America—not the United States of Tokyo.” This moment reveals starkly how the rigid ideas about identity that make Henry feel lonely even within his family also lead directly to bigotry more generally. Chaz implies that while Henry can’t consider any part of his native country home, Chaz himself can set foot anywhere in Seattle, even a Japanese neighborhood, and consider it home. This scene also makes it clear how Chaz’s confidence is built on racist social norms. When Chaz and his friends first see Henry, one of the boys yells, “It’s a Jap!” only to be countered by another boy: “No, it’s a Chink.” Just moments later, Chaz says to Henry, in reference to Henry’s friend Sheldon Thomas, “Your nigger friend ain’t around today, is he?” These three racial slurs all make the same point: they highlight the idea that if you are not a white American, you are not a real American. This language reveals the underlying racism of either/or ideas about identity; it makes it clear that within such a system people who aren’t white are automatically considered “not American.”

Even Keiko and Henry’s close friendship is not immune to these widespread notions about the nature of identity. When Henry first meets Keiko, he is shocked to learn that she doesn’t speak Japanese. This moment shows that even Henry, who has suffered on a personal level due to rigid ideas about identity, tends to think about identity in either/or terms. Keiko looks Japanese and has a Japanese name, and so Henry assumes she can speak Japanese. Keiko’s identity challenges Henry’s unconscious ideas of what it means to be a member of a certain group, and their first meeting shows how everyone in America—even children who have themselves experienced discrimination—tends to think of identity in oversimplified terms.

But even as the novel shows how widespread these rigid and bigoted ideas of identity are, it also offers a more hopeful alternative through the character of Keiko. Society might suggest that Keiko belongs nowhere, but she insists that she can belong anywhere. For example, when Henry comes to visit her at Camp Harmony, Keiko gives him a bundle of dandelions, saying: “These grow between the floorboards of our house [...] My mom thought it was horrible to have all these weeds growing at our feet, but I like them. They’re the only flowers that grow here. I picked them for you.” Through her positivity in the face of bigotry, Keiko shows that a sense of belonging is possible even when society views one’s identity as unacceptable. Indeed, Keiko and Henry’s friendship is an even bigger example of this idea—they find stability in their relationship, suggesting that individuals do have the power to subvert toxic, oppressive ideas about where they do and don’t belong, even as those ideas cause them harm.