Aftermath | Critical Essay on “Aftermath”
Hong is a writer-in-residence at the Richard Hugo House in Seattle. Nominated for a 2004 Pushcart Prize, she has published poems in numerous journals and is the editor of the fiction and memoir anthology Growing Up Asian American published by William Morrow and Avon Books. In the following essay, Hong discusses Waters’s use of water and light motifs to reinforce the themes of memory and loss.
Like many of the stories in Waters’s acclaimed collection The Laws of Evening, “Aftermath” focuses on the life of an individual dealing with post–World War II conditions in Japan. The protagonist, Makiko, is a young widow whose husband has been killed while fighting the Allied forces during the war, and the plot is driven by Makiko’s attempts to hold onto her pre-war past in the face of rapid modernization. Makiko is particularly concerned with preserving memories and traditional customs as a way to provide a legacy for her seven-year-old son Toshi, who seems...
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