Chapter 2, On Being Japanese and American Summary and Analysis

Yoshiko is four years younger than her sister Keiko, whom she often thinks can do everything better than she can. While they sometimes fight, they usually get along. They are both Nisei, however, which always separates them from their classmates. Although the Uchida's home is distinctly Japanese, their parents are not hardcore traditionalists. Contact with white professors at Doshisha gives them more of a Western outlook. Yet at home they primarily speak in Japanese. Yoshiko's parents are bilingual. Their meals are often a mixture of East and West.

Issei women do not know how to drive; most food is ordered by telephone from a Japanese grocer. Yoshiko's mother is about staying clean and is an excellent seamstress. Yoshiko notes that she is often sick, despite her mother's good health habits, although...