JAPPALACHIAN by Mandy Jones

JAPPALACHIAN by Mandy Jones

In 1986, when I was in the 6th grade, I took my Japanese grandmother to school for show-and-tell. My classroom was in a small rural North Georgia town called Ft. Oglethorpe, thus named after a fort built there during World War I & World War II. For the directionally challenged, that’s a ways down the road from the mighty Chickamauga Battlefield which saw the bloodiest scrimmages of the Civil War. Ambrose Bierce wrote about his troubles here and we were taught, as we waved our Confederate flags on ‘Gray and Blue Day’, that “The South Shall Rise Again”. Now when I say I took my grandmother to show and tell, I don’t mean as an onlooker; she was the main attraction. I can only think of one previous time my school was so taken with a visitor. Earlier that year, to commemorate Fort Oglethorpe’s important contribution during the wars, we became the proud recipient of an Apache military helicopter. We all single filed our way right out of math class to gather around and watch a giant crane lower and mount that bad boy onto a pole, right beside our school and in front of our tiny public library. There she sat in all her glory until the 90’s when some visiting war enthusiast noticed she was locked and fully loaded; she was swiftly and carefully removed while Oglethorpians watched from an unsafe distance the very next week.

The arrival of the Apache was the last time Fort Oglethorpe Elementary was a buzz about anything. But on this show-and-tell Tuesday morning, grades 1-6th noisily gathered into the cafeteria to meet my Obachan. As I tightly held her hand, I paraded her around that cafeteria like a prize pony. Once settled, she pulled out 5x5 pictures of my mother and I in our family kimono. My mother was four in the pictures, but I was so short I had to wait until I was in fifth grade to wear it. Grandmother pulled out the golden obi from a hat box and explained the importance of how to wear it. No one was allowed to try it on even though they begged. One kid attempted to touch it, but after my grandmother, swift as a ninja, smacked his hand away, no other attempt was made to paw at its golden, silky threads. Once the demonstration was over, and the obi was safely stowed back into the hatbox, my grandmother began to take commands from an army of little people demanding she translate English words into Japanese ones. Quicker than one would expect we shifted into “potty language” and quickly tired from the linguistic transmutation. Obachan, sensing the turn in the room, revealed a giant bag of treats: rice candy, onigiri, and Hello Kitty stickers. Even after several weeks passed, my classmates continued to talk about my grandmother and our show-and-tell extravaganza.

On reflection now, my grandmother wasn’t asked about her hometown. She didn’t pull out a map or elaborate on what it was like to immigrate from Japan right after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Sure, we were in 6th grade, but she didn’t voluntarily share, and we didn’t ask. Later, my school mates would marvel at how they couldn’t even tell I “Was part ‘Oriental’”, and that my mother “passed” as white when they saw her in the car line picking me up after school. Perhaps unintentionally, they made it seem as if I should be proud of this fact, or more so, grateful. As we aged and moved into high school in the early 90’s, a few of my classmates had relatives that were Klan members and they themselves would eventually become members as well. I remember how strange it seemed to me that these children who had marveled at my grandmother in elementary school and gobbled up the rice crackers she handed out could now ponder a hate crime against her. Or possibly even me? Did I carry enough Japanese DNA to warrant a Klan member attack? Is there a percentage ratio I should concern myself with?

Truth be known, I struggle with the other side as well. My daughter is thirteen and has been privileged to form a culturally diverse friend group. However, during her 12th birthday party, celebrated at our home, one of her Asian friend’s mothers was staring, head cocked to the side, at mine and Tilly’s kimono pictures on the wall in the hallway. Did she think we were appropriating culture as our white faces smiled back at her while wearing a traditional Japanese kimono? As I quickly explained the situation, relief slowly spread across her face. At that moment, I suddenly felt the need to pull out my 94-year-old grandmother again for show-and-tell to authenticate my ethnicity.

Later that night and after the mess of the party was cleaned, I spread out the photos of my mother, myself, and my daughter in the kimono. Here were four generations of women, three of which were raised in the shadow of the Appalachians and one who immigrated after being disowned by her family for marrying an American soldier from the South. I take such pride in our eclecticism; yet, in our Post Covid world, there seems to be little to no place for cultural middle ground. As I look at each of us, marveling as the almond eyes slowly become rounder, the chin a bit sharper and more angular from one generation to the next, I ponder our tradition. Will I need to come to terms with the fact that our traditional kimono pictures end with my daughter now that our ethnicity percentage has reached less than a quarter? As a self-reflective and culturally sensitive individual, I want to make sure that I am progressive when considering these questions. I am not sure how one navigates genetic numbers or the percentages of DNA that allow one to claim ethnicity, but I do know this is something I am going to have to sort out eventually.

Mandy Jones, originally from Rossville, Georgia, is an English instructor currently pursuing her doctorate at Murray State University in English Pedagogy. She has a MA in English from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, and currently lives in Chickamauga, Georgia with her family where she enjoys researching obscure dead poets and collecting antique books.