Home > Kira-Kira Summary & Study Guide

Kira-Kira | Introduction

Cynthia Kadohata's Kira-Kira, published in 2004, is the story of a young Japanese American girl growing up in the 1950s. This is Kadohata's first book for young adults, following several adult novels. It highlights the work and life experiences of Japanese Americans in the pre-Civil Rights era, as well as their struggles to achieve the American dream. The novel explores the relationship between individual and community identity. In Kira-Kira, community helps to define the individual. The main character, Katie, develops her sense of self through her experiences and relationships with others—friends and family, neighbors, teachers, and peers.

Katie chronicles her family's life in the United States. In her first-person narration she emphasizes the lessons in honesty, love, disappointment, and hope that her sister, brother, and parents teach her. Although the novel recounts the many hardships the family endures—back-breaking work, poverty, racism, illness, and death—it also focuses on those moments in life that are kira-kira, which means "glittering" in Japanese. These are the moments when the characters of the novel experience the things that make life worth living: beauty, happiness, and hope.

Kira-Kira Summary

Chapters 1-4

The novel is a first-person narration by Katie Takeshima, the middle child of Japanese-American parents. It chronicles her life from the age of five to her teenage years in southern Georgia. An older Katie tells the story, reflecting on her childhood as well as her relationship with her family and others in the community where she lives. The novel begins when Katie is five years old and living in Iowa. This period of her life is idyllic. She plays constantly with her older sister Lynn, whom she adores. The strong bond with her sister is established here in the opening chapters. Lynn takes care of her while her parents work, and teaches Katie her first word, kira-kira—the Japanese word for "glittering"—those beautiful things in the world that are sources of happiness, such as the sky, the stars, and flowers.

The first chapter offers a scene that is essential to understanding the themes in the novel. Katie and Lynn are playing near a cornfield and when Lynn runs off into the field to hide. Katie becomes upset and begins to cry. Lynn quickly comes out of the field to comfort her, but a vicious dog charges at them. After the dog tears Katie's pants and scrapes her leg with his teeth, Lynn manages to distract him and take Katie to safety, but the dog then attacks Lynn. Frightened for her sister, Katie throws a bottle of milk at him, and the dog runs away. Katie believes Lynn saved her life, but in Lynn's diary entry for that day, transcribed in the novel, she writes, "Later, when the dog attacked me, Katie saved my life." The way the sisters' love for each other saves them is a recurring theme throughout the novel.

The Takeshimas' Oriental grocery store fails because there are few Asians living in their Iowa town, and the family moves to Georgia. On the trip from Iowa to Georgia, Katie begins to learn about racism. When the family stops at a motel to spend the night, they are told that they may only stay in the back rooms reserved for Indians. When Katie's father explains they are not Indian, the woman at the front desk replies that the back rooms are for Mexicans, too. Katie protests that they are not Mexicans, either, but her father quietly fills out the registration card, telling the woman that the back room is fine. He does not argue with the woman at the motel because his family needs a place to sleep.

With the help of her Uncle Katsuhisa, Katie's parents get jobs in a chicken hatchery and poultry processing plant. Her father sexes chickens—he divides the male chicks from the female—and her mother is responsible for cutting drumsticks off chicken bodies in the processing plant. Their jobs require that Katie's parents spend many hours away from home and her father sometimes sleeps at the hatchery because the work hours are so long. Her mother often works extra hours and comes home exhausted. Katie, Lynn, and their little brother Sammy must sometimes fend for themselves and take care of each other.

Only thirty-one Japanese Americans live in the Takeshimas' town—Chesterfield, Georgia—and they keep to themselves. The rest of the town's population does not even seem to understand where they are from. When Katie starts school, the other children ask her "Are you Chinese or Japanese?" and "What's your native name?" even though Katie has developed a southern accent and has lived in America her whole life. Aside from their questions, the kids at school ignore her, just as Lynn warned that they might. The children at school do not speak to Lynn, either, and the only friends Katie's and Lynn's parents have are the few Japanese people living in their apartment complex. Lynn tells Katie that the townspeople believe the Japanese are worthless, "like doormats—or ants or something!" and the two sisters vow to live near each other by the sea when they grow up. The Takeshimas' youngest son Samson Ichiro Takeshima—Sammy—is born in this early part of the novel as well.

Chapters 5-8

Katie takes care of Sammy the same way Lynn took care of her, spending all her spare time with him. Lynn practices writing short stories in her diary, mostly about living by the sea. She begins to feel ill and worries that she cannot help Katie with her homework. Lynn is an excellent student who gets As in school, while Katie gets straight Cs. She is bored by schoolwork and does not apply herself.

When Lynn is fourteen, she begins to make friends at school—because she is so pretty, according to Katie. Lynn becomes best friends with Amber, a white American girl, "one of those really girlie girls who paint their fingernails and even their toenails." Katie watches as Lynn transforms into a young woman. As Lynn develops an interest in boys and a longing to fit in with her American peers, Katie feels as though she and her sister are growing apart. She resents the fact that Lynn still sees her as a child. Lynn and Amber convince Uncle Katsuhisa to take the family camping so that they can be near some boys from... » Complete Kira-Kira Summary