Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford

School without Keiko is miserable, but when the cafeteria manager, Mrs. Henry says a heart-wrenching goodbye to Keiko and her family at the train station. Shortly after Henry meets Keiko’s parents for the first time, word comes that the Japanese American families are Seattle will be removed and resettled in internment camps. Keiko finds she can’t bring herself to burn her family’s photo albums and asks Henry to hide them for her he agrees. Not long after, many Japanese families begin to burn letters and family photos-anything that might cause the police to be suspicious of their loyalty to America. One night, while attending a performance by their friend Sheldon Thomas and famous Seattle musician Oscar Holden, Henry and Keiko witness the arrest of several Japanese citizens by the FBI. Henry and Keiko bond over their shared love of jazz music. His father has forbidden him from speaking Chinese at home, and since neither his father nor his mother speaks strong English, Henry’s home life has been incredibly quiet. Aside from Keiko, Henry doesn’t have many people to talk to. Henry and Keiko work in their school kitchen together, and though Henry worries about drawing his father’s ire for befriending a Japanese person, he begins spending time with Keiko outside of school. Keiko is a second-generation American both her parents were born in the United States. Henry is a first-generation American: his Chinese nationalist father hates Japanese people, whose forces have been at war with China’s for decades. Henry and Keiko meet in Seattle during World War II they both attend an all-white school called Rainier Elementary. Through intertwined timelines-one in the 1940s and one in the 1980s- Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet tells the love story of a Chinese American boy, Henry Lee, and a Japanese American girl, Keiko Okabe.

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford