February 2012 Meeting

Image from here.

Super Bowl Sunday, February 5, 2012

1 p.m.

The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh

Give it a chance to seek sunlight for itself

 

I wouldn't coax the plant if I were you.
Such watchful nurturing would do harm.
Let the soil rest from such digging
And wait until it's dry before you water it.
The leaf's inclined to find it's own direction;
Give it a chance to seek sunlight for itself.
Much growth is stunted by careful prodding
Too eager tenderness.
The things we love we have to learn to leave alone.

--Naomi L Madgett

The Language of Flowers

by Vanessa Diffenbaugh

Kindle, Hardbound, or Paperback available here.

January 2012 Meeting

At Dutchbaby's
Wednesday, January 11
7 p.m.

Any Night Baked Rice

Image and recipe from here.

Makes 4 to 6 servings

Ingredients
1            tablespoon unsalted butter
1/4        cup finely chopped onion
1            garlic clove, minced
1            cup long-grain rice
1/4        teaspoon dried thyme, crushed
1 1/2      cups low-sodium chicken broth
1            bay leaf

Preheat oven to 425°F. Melt the butter in a flameproof, ovenproof pot with a heavy lid (I use Le Creuset’s cast-iron 18cm French oven) over medium heat. Add the onion and cook until tender but not brown, about 4 to 5 minutes. Add garlic and cook, stirring, until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add the rice and thyme; cook and stir about 1 minute more (grains should start to cook a bit but not brown, and should glisten with butter). Add the chicken stock and then the bay leaf; stir to break up any clumps of rice. Bring to a boil.

Cover the casserole tightly and slide it into the oven. Bake the rice for 15 minutes. Remove from oven; let stand, covered, for 5 minutes. Serve immediately or let stand, covered, in a warm place (such as on an unheated back burner) for up to 20 minutes more. Remove bay leaf and stir with a fork before serving.

Chicken Breast Calvados

Image from here

CHICKEN BREAST CALVADOS

Printed from COOKS.COM

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1 lg. (about 1/2 lb.) Golden Delicious or Newtown Pippin apple
1/4 tsp. ground nutmeg
1/4 c. apple brandy, Brandy, or apple juice
2 boned & skinned chicken breast halves, (about 3/4 lb. total)
2 slices (about 1 oz. each) Havarti cheese
Minced parsley

Peel, core, and thinly slice apple. Divide between 2 shallow ovenproof Ramekins (1 1/2 to 2 cup size) the apple slices, brandy, and half the nutmeg. Cover Ramekins tightly with foil. Bake apples in a 400 degree oven until tender when pierced, about 20 minutes. Rinse chicken and pat dry. Put one breast half in each dish, basting surface of chicken with juices, then sprinkle with remaining nutmeg. Bake, uncovered, until chicken is no longer pink in center of thickest part (cut to test), about 12 minutes. Top chicken with cheese. Broil 6 inches from heat until cheese is bubbling, about 2 minutes longer. Sprinkle with parsley.

Recipe from here.

The Buddha in the Attic

Discussion Questions

1. The Buddha in the Attic is narrated in the first person plural, i.e., told from the point of view of a group of women rather than an individual. Discuss the impact of this narrative decision on your reading experience. Why do you think the author made the choice to tell the story from this perspective?

2. Why is the novel called The Buddha in the Attic? To what does the title refer?

3. The novel opens with the women on the boat traveling from Japan to San Francisco. What does Otsuka tell us is “the first thing [they] did,” and what does this suggest about the trajectories of their lives?

4. What are the women’s expectations about America? What are their fears? Why are they convinced that “it was better to marry a stranger in America than grow old with a farmer from the village”?

5. Discuss Otsuka’s use of italics in the novel. What are these shifts in typography meant to connote? How do they add to our knowledge of the women as individuals? 

6. Otsuka tells us that the last words spoken by the women’s mothers still ring in their ears: “You will see: women are weak, but mothers are strong.” What does this mean, and how does the novel bear this out?

7. In the final sentence of “First Night,” Otsuka writes, “They took us swiftly, repeatedly, all throughout the night, and in the morning when we woke we were theirs.”  Discuss the women’s first nights with their new husbands. Are there particular images you found especially powerful? How did you feel reading this short chapter?

8. Why was the first word of English the women were taught “water” ?

9. In the section entitled “Whites,” Otsuka describes several acts of kindness and compassion on the part of the women’s husbands. In what ways were the husbands useful to them or unexpectedly gentle with them in these early days? How does this reflect the complexity of their relationships?

10. What are the women’s lives like in these early months in America? How do their experiences and challenges differ from what they had been led to expect?  How are they perceived by their husbands? By their employers? Discuss the disparity between the women’s understanding of their role in the American economy and what Otsuka suggests is the American perception of the Japanese women’s power.

11. Later in this section, the women ask themselves, “Is there any tribe more savage than the Americans?” What occasions this question? What does the author think? What do you think?

12. Discuss the passage on p. 37 that begins, “We forgot about Buddha. We forgot about God.... I fear my soul has died.... And often our husbands did not even notice we’d disappeared.”  What does Otsuka mean by “disappeared”? What is she suggesting about their spiritual lives, their inner selves? Do the women reappear in this sense in the course of the novel? When?

13. Throughout the novel, Otsuka uses the phrase “One of us....”  Why? What is the effect of this shift in point of view?  What does Otsuka achieve through this subtle adjustment?

14. Otsuka writes, “They gave us new names. They called us Helen and Lily. They called us Margaret. They called us Pearl.” Discuss how this mirrors the names taken by the women’s children later in the novel.

15. Discuss the complexities and nuances of the relationship between the Japanese women and the white women. Was it strictly an employer/employee relationship, or something more?

16. What is J-town? Why do the women choose J-town over any attempt to return home?

17. The section called “Babies” is just six pages long but strikes with unique force. What was your reaction to the experiences of the women in childbirth? Take a close look at the last six sentences of the chapter, with a particular emphasis on the very last sentence.  On what note does Otsuka end the chapter, and why? What does that last sentence reveal about Otsuka’s ideas about the future and about the past?

18. “One by one all the old words we had taught them began to disappear from their heads,” Otsuka writes of the women’s children. Discuss the significance of names and naming in The Buddha in the Attic. What does it mean for these children to reject their mother’s language? What point is Otsuka making about cultural inheritance?

19. How do the the dreams of the children differ from the dreams of their mothers?

20. Why do the women feel closer to their husbands than ever before in the section entitled “Traitors”?

21. How is the structure of the penultimate section, called “Last Day,” different from the structure of all the sections that precede it? Why do you think Otsuka chose to set it apart?

22. Who narrates the novel’s final section, “A Disappearance”? Why? What is the impact of this dramatic shift?

23. Discuss themes of guilt, shame, and forgiveness in The Buddha in the Attic.
(Questions issued by publisher.)