Tibetan Butter Tea & Pink Gin (Kyoto Journal)
On November 30, 2004, the Himalayan moon setting over Darjeeling town and the snowy peaks of the Kanchenjunga range, my Tibetan grandmother died. According to the Western calendar, she was four months short of her 100th birthday but in the Tibetan way of calculating you’re one year old at birth, so she made it to 100. At home in Tokyo, I’d dreamed about her all night and was devastated but not surprised when my relatives called early in the morning to tell me she was gone.
There’s No Reason to Get Romantic (American Dragons, HarperCollins)
My grandmother crossed the mountains, my mother the ocean—I want to know where my journey is. If I leave behind climbing the Golden Gate Bridge at night and camping on the beach and weekly trips to Berkeley to see The Rocky Horror Picture Show, where will I go? But then why should I go, why is it that my mother and grandmother are always wanting me to be something I am not?
HuffPost Blog
My HuffPost blog, on topics ranging from my family's life in Spain to the Japanese 3/11 earthquake to pilgrimage in India.
There's No Reason to Get Romantic (AMERICAN DRAGONS, HarperCollins)
My grandmother crossed the mountains, my mother the ocean—I want to know where my journey is. If I leave behind climbing the Golden Gate Bridge at night and camping on the beach and weekly trips to Berkeley to see The Rocky Horror Picture Show, where will I go? But then why should I go, why is it that my mother and grandmother are always wanting me to be something I am not? I stand by the door for a few more minutes, watching my grandmother slowly, gently count her beads of bone, and wonder if it’s really possible that I’m related by blood to this tiny woman murmuring in a language I do not know.
Gypsy Cante (New World Writing)
Nestled in her silk scarves, my mother always kept a bar of Myrurgia’s Maja soap, wrapped in the distinctive red-and-black paper with a flamenco dancer on the label. Because my father—an American my mother met in medical school—had been stationed at the Rota naval base, near Cadiz and the Strait of Gibraltar, I was born in Spain and we stayed there for two years…