long-distance fashion. He is far away from his native land, in a midwestern federal penitentiary, without a real home. Emiko’s treatment of Alden, through her letters, gives him a home, a place he can come to, to brag, to share, to express fear and anger. True, she never actually meets him, but her mothering instinct clicks on almost instantly after she receives Alden’s first letter, noting that he is ‘‘young enough to be one of her children.’’ At first she shies away from answering the letter, finding all sorts of reasons why continuing the correspondence would be a bad idea. But suddenly, ‘‘against her own better judgment,’’ she sends him a letter with a gentle critique of the essay he has asked her to look over. With every letter, Emiko learns something new about him, and he responds to her attentions with the exuberance of a proud child showing off his accomplishments from school.

Alden thrives under Emiko’s nurturing, at least as reported by Emiko in the story. When he first writes her, he is described as a ‘‘prisoner-patient,’’ receiving ‘‘massive doses of Thorazine’’ for depression. After a time, Emiko is happy to report that he ‘‘seemed to be an exuberant spirit,’’ even under the oppressive conditions in prison. She is able to congratulate him on receiving payment for a published poem, and by the end of the story he has received a grant to attend community college. In his final letter to her, he rejoices with the news that he will be transferred to a jail in Alaska, near his family. After Emiko does not hear from him for a long while, she feels what any mother would feel after doing all that she could for her child: she assumes that he is very busy and happy doing the things he enjoys.

Emiko tells the story of her relationship with Alden in an almost off-handed way; as she detracts from her experience as a poet, she also diminishes her role in Alden’s life. For example, she never directly talks about mailing him photographs of her family, but lets the information about this tender gesture slip when she mentions that Alden thanks her for the pictures in a letter. Although he requests the pictures, Emiko’s sending them opens her up as never before. It is after this that Alden asks if she is available to meet him en route during his transfer from the Midwest penitentiary to one near Seattle. But Emiko declines his first offer to meet, possibly because she knows that the reality of Alden might ruin the image she has of him. Her second attempt to see him fails, thanks to some official mix-ups, but her response is to make fun of the regulations, giving the impression that she is not terribly upset and maybe even a bit relieved.

Emiko’s family lacks men, with her husband dead and, apparently, with only daughters as children. Alden serves as the perfect son for Emiko. He shares her interest in literature and, from her retelling of his letter, works hard and stays out of trouble while he is in prison. True, it is ironic that ‘‘the good son’’ should be in prison, but Emiko studiously avoids thinking too much about why Alden might be serving time. When she does consider this fact, she decides to envision him as a forger, because a favorite neighbor was a forger, and then she launches into a small soliloquy outlining her discomfort with the idea of imprisonment. Her ambivalence comes, in part, from her own experiences at a World War II internment camp for Japanese Americans, but there is a naïve quality to her eventual admission that ‘‘there must be some system to temporarily segregate those who persisted in preying on others.’’ It is almost as though she wishes to protect Alden, as she would a son, from the harshness of real punishment.

Emiko also mothers another minor but critical character in the story, her neighbor who, years ago, was imprisoned for forgery, and of whom Alden reminds her. The way she ministered to her neighbor was very tender and maternal. Twice he asked her to remove splinters from his hand, and both times ‘‘he had begun whimpering and cringing’’ when she approached with the sterilized needle. At first, she thought he was joking but then saw that his tears were real. ‘‘He was one of the innocents of the world,’’ remembers Emiko, ‘‘living about a foot off the ground.’’ Part of Emiko’s persona for Alden is derived from this sensitive neighbor who, like Alden, was both an artist and a felon.

Yamamoto has created a character who, ‘‘against her own better judgment,’’ makes a connection with someone very different from herself, thanks to the power of her maternal instincts. Her strength and power come from her role as a mother in her family, and this is extended beyond the bounds of her own home and into the lives of others. Emiko tries to downplay her matriarchal position and importance, just as she attempts to reduce her role as a poet, but the lesson of her experience with Alden shows that this is impossible; she can say all she wants about merely being ‘‘an aging Nisei widow’’ but the proof is in her actions.

Source: Susan Sanderson, Critical Essay on ‘‘The Eskimo Connection,’’ in Short Stories for Students, The Gale Group, 2002.

Sometimes, the words an author leaves unsaid are as important to the story as the written words on the page. In ‘‘The Eskimo Connection,’’ Hisaye Yamamoto builds a story from broken glimpses into the lives of the two main characters, Emiko Toyama and Alden Ryan Walunga. The written correspondence that they share with each other is not constant, and what they write is not always definite or necessarily reliable. Yamamoto provides the reader with clues to the dialogue between the two but rarely uses the original text from the letters Emiko and Alden write. By giving fragments of a story, she emphasizes to the reader what may not be obvious about the characters to themselves and about the world in which they live. The story of Asian-American history, from the Eskimos to the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, has been greatly ignored in most surveys of American history. Emiko and Alden, to a great extent, are unable to realize their own identities as prisoners, and Yamamoto uses this ignorance to give a voice to the hidden story of life for Asian Americans, on both an internal and external level.

While Emiko is shocked at the conditions under which Alden lives, she never connects them to her own experience in the internment camp. Yamamoto makes one mention to Emiko’s experience there, writing, ‘‘As a young woman in camp, she had hung out sometimes with people who wrote and painted and she knew what vulnerable psyches resided in creative critters.’’ Using terms like ‘‘hung out’’ suggests choice, and if a reader knew little about American history, it might be difficult to understand that she was referring to something other than some sort of enjoyable day camp for young women. Emiko seems to ignore the fact that she was a prisoner in the camp. When she received word from Alden’s prison office that she must get permission before sending a literary magazine, Yamamoto describes her reaction, ‘‘That was what being in prison was, was it, the relinquishment of every liberty that those on the outside took for granted?’’ Emiko is forthcoming in her beliefs that prisons are not the answer for crime. Yamamoto makes a point against internment through the subtleties of Emiko’s argument against prisons. She also questions the morality of government by having Emiko remember the story in which a government official thought it moral to financially reimburse people for property damage, while ignoring the true moral problem with the situation.

In A People’s History of the United States, Howard Zinn tells how in 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt gave the army power to ‘‘arrest every Japanese-American on the West coast . . . to take them from their homes, transport them to camps far into the interior, and keep them there under prison conditions.’’ Emiko should be able to understand the circumstances under which Alden lives in prison because she shared a similar experience of not being free. That Emiko is seemingly unaware of the seriousness and unjustness of her past makes it all the more sad that she cannot relate it to her own experience. Yamamoto shows that not only is imprisonment of Japanese Americans by the United States government absent in the minds of the average Americans, it is also taken as a normal experience of life for those who were the victims of it. Yamamoto provides a voice for the words that Emiko cannot herself express.

While Alden’s imprisonment is more defined than Emiko’s, he accepts his situation with little outward discontent. Yamamoto writes, ‘‘Alden Ryan Walunga seemed to be an exuberant spirit even under these stifling conditions.’’ While Emiko feels guilty and sad for not being able to visit him, she notices that he is seemingly unaffected. Alden lives happily despite the restrictions on his life. In one letter to Emiko, he writes, ‘‘There is lots of beauty in McNeil.’’ After Emiko’s failed attempt to visit him, instead of expressing disappointment, he finds happiness in her being on the visitor list, even though there is little chance of her ever visiting. In his first letter to Emiko, the article Alden includes begins by him expressing the unjustness of the Eskimo land being taken over and destroyed. He attempts to write a serious article outlining the ways in which his people and their land and culture have been taken over and, in many ways, taken away. For some reason, his devotion to Christianity prohibits him from making a clear argument, and Emiko finds his article clouded with confusion. That Yamamoto has Alden’s article end in a Christian sermon is important because it shows what a powerful influence Western culture has had over him, even to the point that it damages his ability to fully realize the negative effects it has had on his own culture. The story that Alden later sends to Emiko, which she surmises as his story, is dark and bloody but has another happy and religious ending, mirroring his first article. The reader cannot truly know whether it is Alden’s story or not. He is a medicated prisoner who is so devoted to Christianity that it has led to what Emiko feels is ‘‘self-delusion.’’

Both characters’ minds are barred from seeing themselves and their situations clearly. In addition to leaving the story of her physical imprisonment in an internment camp untold, Emiko also lacks a voice to express the unhappiness of the imprisonment in which she resides at home. Although Alden is in a physical prison, he still finds the inspiration to write. The reason why Emiko doesn’t write anymore is unclear, although it appears she has simply gotten too caught up in the day-to-day tasks of life to find the inspiration or the time to devote to her creative side. Yamamoto provides little detail of the life of Emiko, naming her a widow but not giving a personality to her husband or to her kids. Emiko doesn’t seem happy, but she does seem somewhat content with her situation. Yamamoto shows little closeness in the relationships that Emiko maintains, and Emiko seems to be lost in a world of taking care of daily business but not really living freely. She is so accustomed to living this way that, similar to her references to her internment, she is mute in voicing concern about her limited freedoms.

Throughout the story, Emiko seems surprised by the vulnerability of humans. In reference to her former neighbor, she remembers him crying at the sight of a needle. Initially, she laughed at his reaction before realizing he truly was frightened. In addition, Emiko notices the fragility of marriage when she discovers many people in her life are seeking divorce after many years together. She is surprised to learn that something as sacred and seemingly eternal as marriage is vulnerable to destruction. Emiko never seems able to confront her own vulnerabilities, as if she is unwillingly restricted from doing so. In the introduction to Yamamoto’s Seventeen Syllables and Other Stories, King-Kok Cheung writes, ‘‘We must be attentive to all the words on the page to unbury covert plots, fathom the characters’ repressed emotions, and detect the author’s silent indictment and implicit sympathy.’’ Yamamoto’s subtle tendencies to leave things unsaid help the reader discover what the characters cannot alone express.

Yamamoto explores many ways in which people are imprisoned, and the story fits into a broad prospective on American literature. When Emiko reads the regulations for visitations at McNeil Island, she notes that women are expected to dress a certain way, not wearing anything too revealing or close- fitting. While Emiko makes a joke about this, she does not present her opinions on the matter. There is no dress code for male visitors. Yamamoto, with subtlety, makes a commentary on the ways in which women must limit their freedoms to be respected and accepted in certain situations. She makes the point that people share a lack of freedom and also a collective lack of ability to express concerns about their own limitations. Two seemingly different individuals make a connection based on the past, the present, and the future.

Yamamoto quietly and subtly gives a voice to Asian Americans in a place where it is often lacking. She encourages people to seek connections to one another and to open up discussion so that important events in history and in individuals’ lives do not go on ignored. Emiko makes a connection with a prisoner, whom she appears to have little in common with, through written communication. The Asian-American literary magazine is important to her and to Alden because it provides a voice that they themselves have trouble finding, and it gives them hope that one day they will speak and be heard. ‘‘The Eskimo Connection’’ is not simply a story about Asian Americans but one that forces all readers to look within themselves to identify the prisons in which each person resides and the ways in which the past has influenced everyone. Yamamoto ends her sad story not unlike the way Alden ended his, by providing a glimmer of hope for the future, that one day through literature and through open discussion, no one will be condemned to live without a voice for their experiences.

Source: Marcey Carroll, Critical Essay on ‘‘The Eskimo Connection,’’ in Short Stories for Students, The Gale Group, 2002.

In Yamamoto’s ‘‘The Eskimo Connection,’’ the narrator, Emiko Toyama, does her best to piece together enough information about Alden Ryan Walunga, her incarcerated pen pal, to create some picture of who he is and what his life is like. Throughout the narrative, the reader is also invited to create a picture of Emiko’s life, which seems to revolve around her family. Accordingly, Emiko’s interest in Alden is partly focused on what she imagines his relationship is to his family. However, Emiko’s interpretation of the information she gathers from Alden’s letters is much more optimistic than what the discerning reader may gather about the young man’s family relations.

Emiko describes herself as ‘‘an aging Nisei widow in Los Angeles with several children, three still at home, whose main avocation was not writing poetry but babysitting the grandchildren.’’ Emiko is a published poet who nonetheless spends the majority of her time tending to her family. That this is no easy task is indicated by her description of her time spent ‘‘trying as usual to cope with the needs of her brood.’’ Among other family concerns, Emiko faces ongoing financial struggles. A widow supporting her own children, as well as grandchildren, Emiko notes that her deceased husband’s life insurance ‘‘was adequate if she managed shrewdly’’; but adds, there ‘‘was always something’’ that required money to meet the needs of her family. These problems include: the usual health concerns of any family, such as ‘‘dentist, doctor . . . flu’’; the challenge of seeing to her children’s education, such as ‘‘distressing report cards’’ and ‘‘filling out unwieldy applications for college grants’’; and maintaining a home, such as ‘‘keeping up with the seasonal needs of the yard, a new roof or water heater.’’

Included in this list of ‘‘routine cares’’ Emiko mentions, without further explanation, ‘‘marijuana’’ and ‘‘living together without marriage.’’ This story, which takes place in the mid-1970s, refers to specific challenges to traditional family life that became prominent during the 1960s and 1970s. Apparently, Emiko must face the discovery that one or more of her children or grandchildren have been caught using illegal drugs. In addition, she is challenged with the nontraditional situation of one of her ‘‘brood’’ choosing to live with a romantic partner out of wedlock. However, most distressing of all to Emiko is the fact that many of her ‘‘friends, neighbors, and relatives’’ are getting divorced, ‘‘after twenty-five years of marriage or more!’’—another break with traditional family life. Although she herself is widowed, the possibility that she and her husband, had he lived, may have faced the prospect of divorce themselves is extremely disturbing to her; she asks herself, ‘‘If Mits had not died, would they too be undergoing such trauma?’’

Although she clearly manages to cope with each of these challenges, clearly, she is not entirely comfortable with the challenges ‘‘modern family life’’ poses to traditional expectations about family. In addition, Emiko sometimes feels that, despite all her efforts, her children do not necessarily value her role in their lives. When she goes out of town for a wedding, she calls home just once, ‘‘to make sure all was peaceful there,’’ and ‘‘got the impression that the kids didn’t care if she ever got back.’’ Only years later is she given reason to believe that her presence in their lives is crucial to the peace of the household, when she learns that ‘‘her younger daughter, rebelling at last against her sister’s authoritarianism, had dragged her all the way around the house by her long hair.’’

At the beginning of ‘‘The Eskimo Connection,’’ the narrator poses the question: ‘‘What commonality was there between a probably embittered young man and an aging Nisei widow in Los Angeles?’’ In addition to both being Asian American, and both being writers, Emiko imagines a commonality between herself and Alden Ryan Walunga in terms of their relationship to their families. She figures out that he is ‘‘the third of seven children with two older sisters and four younger brothers.’’ She notes that he attributes his large family to ‘‘the Eskimo need for survival,’’ meaning that a large family is considered important to both the survival of the family itself and to the survival of the Eskimo as a people.

However, there is evidence within the story that Alden’s relationship to his family is of a more sinister nature than Emiko would like to imagine. The last correspondence she receives from him contains a story he has written that hints at why he was imprisoned. The story tells of the funeral of a young man who, using a twenty-two Remington magnum rifle, killed his uncle (his mother’s youngest brother) and a female relative, after he raped her. The story focuses on the mother, who is grieving the death of her eldest son. But, Alden gives his story a happy ending, rendering the murderous son ‘‘reborn in Christ, a new man, washed clean of his sins!’’

Emiko asks herself, ‘‘Was this, then, Alden’s story?’’ but insists on maintaining a more optimistic picture of her imprisoned pen pal and his relationship to his family. By the end of the ‘‘The Eskimo Connection,’’ when Emiko no longer hears from Alden, she consoles herself by imagining that he has either served his sentence and is on parole, or that, at least, he has been transferred to a prison in Alaska, where his mother, brothers, and sisters can visit him regularly.

The reader of ‘‘The Eskimo Connection,’’ on the other hand, is invited to piece together a harsher picture of Alden’s relationship to his family. The literary references in his letters, for example, hint at a penchant for murderous family relations.

In his correspondence with Emiko, Alden refers to his love by the name ‘‘Ophelia’’—the loveinterest in Shakespeare’s play Hamlet. The reference to Hamlet raises the specter of a family murder plot. In the play, Hamlet suspects his uncle, his father’s brother, of killing his father in order to marry his mother and become king. Throughout the play, Hamlet intends to murder his uncle to avenge the death of his father. In the process, he accidentally kills the father of Ophelia, the young woman with whom he is in love. Out of grief and despair, Ophelia goes crazy and drowns herself. In the end, Hamlet succeeds in killing his uncle, then his mother drinks poison, and Ophelia’s brother kills Hamlet to avenge the death of his father. If Alden refers to his love as Ophelia, by extension, one can conclude that he imagines himself to be Hamlet—an association that resonates with his own story in which a young man has killed his own uncle.

Alden lists among his reading interests the Russian novel The Brothers Karamazov, by Fyodor Dostoyevski. This novel also centers on a family murder plot in which a young man kills his own father in a romantic rivalry. Soon afterward, the young man is imprisoned for murder. Alden’s reference to The Brothers Karamazov invites the reader to draw a parallel with Alden’s situation in that he is incarcerated, perhaps for the murder of one or more family members. In addition, The Brothers Karamazov is a long treatise on Christian faith and the nature of sin, an important element of the novel that is in synch with Alden’s preoccupation with Christianity and apocalypse.

The theme of family is central to ‘‘The Eskimo Connection.’’ Emiko’s life revolves around the care of her family, which poses many challenges to her traditional ideas about family life. Her optimistic perception of Alden’s situation, by the end of the story, is based on the assumption that his mother, brothers, and sisters maintain close ties with him. However, evidence throughout the story suggests that Alden’s relationship to family, and his preoccupations regarding family life, are fraught with violent fantasies—if not actual acts of violence—which Emiko chooses to disregard.

Source: Liz Brent, Critical Essay on ‘‘The Eskimo Connection,’’ in Short Stories for Students, The Gale Group, 2002.