Kathleen Tamagawa grew up with an Irish American mother and a Japanese father. Her memoir “Holy Prayers in a Horse’s Ear” is about her experiences growing up and feeling like she never fit in. She believes being racially mixed is a difficult and complex. Her memoir was written in 1932, so maybe things have become better, but her conclusion was that different cultures and societies are not fully open to completely accepting other races. She explains the title of the book towards the end, when she asks the reader “and now I ask, what use are holy prayers, in a horse's ear? What use are the new and different ways of life, or even viewpoints, when we are mounted and riding our horses?” (Tamgawa, p.158) She believes every culture has a specific set of norms, they are “psychologically” mounted and riding, and not looking around to accept new ideas.
Her view is highly realistic and quite pessimistic. She says that “Try as I would I could never find the charm in being raceless, countryless, and now to all intents and purposes near relativeless as well”(Tamagawa, p. 62). By coming from so many different races she is not quite any of them, but a mixture that she feels does not give her a strong sense of identity, or a strong family bond. She is everything, but nothing. Again, she was writing about her experiences during the middle of the twentieth century, and since then, multiculturalism and diversity has become more common and accepted. Today, she might have an easier experience being from different racial backgrounds.
Furthermore, today more people would have positive reactions to her racial background. She found that people either labeled her. She asks, for example, "Was I a Japanese doll, or a menace?" (Tamagawa, p. 92). She realized that people reacted her according to stereotypes. Personally, I enjoy meeting people from different backgrounds and think diversity is a good thing. She would group me into the people who thought she was cute. However, I do not think of people as exotic anthropological animals, but as unique human beings. The kinds of stereotypes she describes are a negative way of thinking about individuals. She is right however, we do all to some extent look at the world through our own cultural lens. In the last thirty years increased globalization has forced people to get off their “psychological horses” and accept diversity.
Work Cited
Eldridge, Kathleen Tamagawa. Holy Prayers in a Horse's Ear. New York: Long & Smith, 1932. Print.
