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Suzanne Kamata’s latest book is Call Me Okaasan, Adventures in Multicultural Mothering, published by Wyatte-MacKenzie Publishing and due out in May 2009. Having read her previous two books, Losing Kei, (Leapfrog Press 2008) and Love You to Pieces (also Leapfrog Press 2008), a collection of literary works on raising children with special needs, I was excited about delving into this one to find in it shared experiences and new inspiration.

Although located in Japan herself, Kamata managed to find a wide range of female writers located in Japan, Israel, Australia, Spain, Germany, Turkey, Iran, the Philippines, South Africa and Kyrgyzstan, among others. Some of the stories are about women in the US or Canada who are the product of international marriages, have an international marriage, were born and raised in another country, or who have children adopted from other countries.

About half of the stories–interestingly enough the first and last handfuls–were beautifully written, honed-down vignettes of multicultural mothering experience. They were what I was expecting and looking forward to; something simple and significant. The ones in the middle, however, were disconcertingly subjective and jumbled. At the beginning of each story in this group, the writer appeared to have a theme she meant to be writing about, but all the other details of her life got in the way by the second or third page, and at the end, the theme would be trotted out again. By then, though, I was exhausted by the other parts of her life I’d been privy to and ready to be on my way.

I wondered whether this could just be the part of my own life that I wanted to ignore and hoped to overcome. Multicultural mothering is messy and confusing! I wanted the stories to be summed up neatly and tied with a bow. I wanted to use them as a way to make sense of my own chaotic life, and instead I’d been presented with more of it on a platter. In the end, though, I believe short stories need to have a simple theme that is adhered to and expanded on. In that way, while the stories in Okaasan succeed in presenting an alarmingly accurate portrait of raising children in more than one culture, some of them lacked in literary quality.

Having said that, there were a good number of stories that I enjoyed for both content and style. Leza Lowitz in “Like the Lotus,” “Eleven Snapshots for Your Baby Book, Reconstructed in Blues” by Susannah Pabot, and “A Hundred Years at Fifteen” by Xujun Eberlein each eloquently tells the story of several generations of family, leading up to the youngest. A topic of personal interest that ran through many of the others—language—is arguably the biggest point of potential guilt and regret for parenting in a multicultural situation. The mothers here have struggled with whether to raise their children in two languages, give up the effort, or resist the temptation to do so in the first place. “Two Names for Every Beautiful Thing” by Violeta Garcia-Mendoza, “I Am Mutti” by Corey Heller, “Promises to Myself” by Devorah Lifshutz, and “So Are You American or Malaysian?” by Juli Herman all wrote about this dilemma and, much to my relief, came up with various results and conclusions, all of which were presented coherently and convincingly.

As the stories show, parenting over cultural borderlines rarely makes for a neat narrative or happily-ever-after ending. But in the abject wish for such, I choose in a totally subjective manner, my favorite character from the stories. The award goes to Connor, in “Some Olympic Wisdom for My Home Team,” by Rose Kent. Born in Korea and adopted into a family with Irish, Korean, Black and American Indian background, Connor embodies the joy and ability to embrace life and his own diversity in a way that is perhaps our most fervent hope for our multicultural children. While watching the Beijing Olympics, the thirteen-year-old exuberantly manages to find a connection between himself, real or imagined, and almost every gold medal winner. “Check this out, Mom!” he calls out “One of ours is catching up!”