But, man, I hate when a story makes me cry. It just sneaks up on you and ambushes you in the feelings. Today's post is devoted to some of those stories.
Books
There actually aren't very many books that have made me cry when I read them. Now, to clarify, when I say "books", I mean actual text on a page (or electronic...field thingy). I will cover manga in another section. I don't know what it is about books, but, although they can make me feel a whole bunch of other emotions: angry, joy, relief, etc... there's something too distant about text on a page to make me cry. There are always exceptions, and I'll go over two of them here.
The first book that made me cry was Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Greene. For those of you who didn't have this book assigned to you in middle school, it's about a 12-year-old Jewish girl, Patty, who falls in love with a German prisoner being held captive in her hometown in Arkansas. When the prisoner, Anton, breaks out of prison, she hides him in the storage room above the garage. Without going into too much detail, things do not go well with this plan. The part that made me cry, however, wasn't the inevitable "death of a loved one", but the aftermath of Patty's choices. In the end, she loses her freedom and her tentative place in her own family. The only person who comes to see her in prison (aiding and abetting the enemy) is her family's African American maid, Ruth. Everyone else has pretty much disowned her without trying to understand her motivations or feelings. Although you can understand her family's reluctance to associate with her, it's still a huge punch to the gut.
Another book that made me cry was Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto. Kitchen was Yoshimoto's Western debut, and if you haven't read it, you really ought to because it's amazing. The story follows a grieving young woman coming to terms with the loss of her beloved grandmother. She reaches out to her grandmother's friends for support, and together they become a new family to weather the storms of loss in their lives. I read this shortly after having lost a family member myself, and Yoshimoto's description of grief hit right on the mark for me. Seriously, though, if you can get your hands on this one, do so.
Movies
There is no medium better suited to inducing a tear-fest than movies. The combination of elements - actors' emoting, musical scores, lighting, framing, color - manage to hit all of your "cry buttons" at once. Children's movies are especially devastating because you let your guard down about them. You go there thinking "there's no way a story about a bunch of stuffed animals is going to make me cry" and before you know it, the toys are on a conveyor belt heading toward an incinerator and you're bawling into your popcorn. And let's not get started on the first twenty minutes of Up.
If you're looking for a good weepy movie, look no further than Still Life. This slow-paced dramatic story chronicles the life of a councilman whose job is to look for the family members of unclaimed corpses. In this era, where anyone can connect with millions of strangers with the click of a mouse or the tap of a key, it's hard to believe that anyone could be so isolated as to have no one to come to their funeral, say a few words, or even mourn for their loss. However, even in this interconnected age, there are still people who have very few connections in the real world. John May does his best to try to find the next-of-kin of these kinds of people, and if there is no one, or no one wants to come for them, he tries to give the deceased a decent funeral based on what he does learn about their lives in the course of his research. This is the kind of movie that really makes you think about those people who might be on the periphery of your life, and it might even inspire you to reach out to those people.
Manga
When you think of manga, you probably think of action, adventure, romance, magic, and The Power of Friendship. You see those big, child-like faces and those colorful splash pages and you think it'll be a nice, light, entertaining read.
And then you read Twin Spica by Kou Yaginuma. Twin Spica is a science fiction story set "five minutes into the future" in a Japan that has tried, and failed, to send a manned mission into space. And when I say failed, I mean failed in the most firey and spectacular manner possible - the maiden launch of the shuttle The Lion crashes onto a busy market street, killing the crew and many civilians. Among those killed is Asumi Kamogawa's mother, but despite this tragedy, Asumi has dreamt of nothing but becoming an astronaut her entire life. However, the cards are stacked against Asumi - she's short, she's weak, she's poor, and her father - an engineer who worked on the ill-fated space project - bore the brunt of the blame for The Lion's failure and lost his job and any credibility he might have had. Yet still she dreams and works hard to get into the extremely competitive and exclusive high school program newly introduced into Japan with the hopes of rebooting its space program.
The story doesn't seem all that sad. I mean, sure, it has sad beginnings, but Asumi doesn't seem to be too hampered by this. However, echos of The Lion play pretty heavily throughout, and almost everyone involved in the program has some sort of tragedy or hardship going on in the background of their lives. Plus, not everyone is going to make it into space, and when someone fails, it's hard to watch them see their hopes and hard work go to waste.
That said, I still highly recommend Twin Spica. It didn't do very well in the Western market, but you can still get it as an ebook.
So, those are my Onion-Cutting Ninja stories. If you have any to share, please leave me a comment!
Books
There actually aren't very many books that have made me cry when I read them. Now, to clarify, when I say "books", I mean actual text on a page (or electronic...field thingy). I will cover manga in another section. I don't know what it is about books, but, although they can make me feel a whole bunch of other emotions: angry, joy, relief, etc... there's something too distant about text on a page to make me cry. There are always exceptions, and I'll go over two of them here.
The first book that made me cry was Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Greene. For those of you who didn't have this book assigned to you in middle school, it's about a 12-year-old Jewish girl, Patty, who falls in love with a German prisoner being held captive in her hometown in Arkansas. When the prisoner, Anton, breaks out of prison, she hides him in the storage room above the garage. Without going into too much detail, things do not go well with this plan. The part that made me cry, however, wasn't the inevitable "death of a loved one", but the aftermath of Patty's choices. In the end, she loses her freedom and her tentative place in her own family. The only person who comes to see her in prison (aiding and abetting the enemy) is her family's African American maid, Ruth. Everyone else has pretty much disowned her without trying to understand her motivations or feelings. Although you can understand her family's reluctance to associate with her, it's still a huge punch to the gut.
Another book that made me cry was Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto. Kitchen was Yoshimoto's Western debut, and if you haven't read it, you really ought to because it's amazing. The story follows a grieving young woman coming to terms with the loss of her beloved grandmother. She reaches out to her grandmother's friends for support, and together they become a new family to weather the storms of loss in their lives. I read this shortly after having lost a family member myself, and Yoshimoto's description of grief hit right on the mark for me. Seriously, though, if you can get your hands on this one, do so.
Movies
There is no medium better suited to inducing a tear-fest than movies. The combination of elements - actors' emoting, musical scores, lighting, framing, color - manage to hit all of your "cry buttons" at once. Children's movies are especially devastating because you let your guard down about them. You go there thinking "there's no way a story about a bunch of stuffed animals is going to make me cry" and before you know it, the toys are on a conveyor belt heading toward an incinerator and you're bawling into your popcorn. And let's not get started on the first twenty minutes of Up.
If you're looking for a good weepy movie, look no further than Still Life. This slow-paced dramatic story chronicles the life of a councilman whose job is to look for the family members of unclaimed corpses. In this era, where anyone can connect with millions of strangers with the click of a mouse or the tap of a key, it's hard to believe that anyone could be so isolated as to have no one to come to their funeral, say a few words, or even mourn for their loss. However, even in this interconnected age, there are still people who have very few connections in the real world. John May does his best to try to find the next-of-kin of these kinds of people, and if there is no one, or no one wants to come for them, he tries to give the deceased a decent funeral based on what he does learn about their lives in the course of his research. This is the kind of movie that really makes you think about those people who might be on the periphery of your life, and it might even inspire you to reach out to those people.
Manga
When you think of manga, you probably think of action, adventure, romance, magic, and The Power of Friendship. You see those big, child-like faces and those colorful splash pages and you think it'll be a nice, light, entertaining read.
And then you read Twin Spica by Kou Yaginuma. Twin Spica is a science fiction story set "five minutes into the future" in a Japan that has tried, and failed, to send a manned mission into space. And when I say failed, I mean failed in the most firey and spectacular manner possible - the maiden launch of the shuttle The Lion crashes onto a busy market street, killing the crew and many civilians. Among those killed is Asumi Kamogawa's mother, but despite this tragedy, Asumi has dreamt of nothing but becoming an astronaut her entire life. However, the cards are stacked against Asumi - she's short, she's weak, she's poor, and her father - an engineer who worked on the ill-fated space project - bore the brunt of the blame for The Lion's failure and lost his job and any credibility he might have had. Yet still she dreams and works hard to get into the extremely competitive and exclusive high school program newly introduced into Japan with the hopes of rebooting its space program.
The story doesn't seem all that sad. I mean, sure, it has sad beginnings, but Asumi doesn't seem to be too hampered by this. However, echos of The Lion play pretty heavily throughout, and almost everyone involved in the program has some sort of tragedy or hardship going on in the background of their lives. Plus, not everyone is going to make it into space, and when someone fails, it's hard to watch them see their hopes and hard work go to waste.
That said, I still highly recommend Twin Spica. It didn't do very well in the Western market, but you can still get it as an ebook.
So, those are my Onion-Cutting Ninja stories. If you have any to share, please leave me a comment!
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