Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, by Jamie Ford, is a story of two children, who are first generation Americans, caught in the middle of the fear and hatred associated with Asian-Americans in World War II.  Unfortunately for these children, they are Chinese-American and Japanese-American in a time where the Asian population, especially the Japanese, were not to be trusted. 

Ford tells the story through a young Chinese-American boy, named Henry, whose father wants him to grow up American so he forces him into an all-white school, forces him to "speak his American" at home, and teaches him that the Japanese are the enemy.   We flip-flop between the Henry from 1942 and the Henry from 1986, seeing this story from both the impressionable eyes of a young boy, but also the life-hardened heart of an older man. 

In 1942, Henry's American school is filled with kids who hate him and the other Chinese-American kids going to another school shun him.  Throughout this ordeal, he meets a girl, whose experience is similar, the only problem, she's Japanese.  Henry and Keiko meet in the kitchen of the all white school where they are "scholarshipping" by working off their tuition preparing, serving, and cleaning up lunch for the other students at the school, among other jobs.  They are the only non-white students, so their relationship grows with every day that passes and they live with the fact that they are shunned and bullied by the other students in the school.  Their experiences bring them closer, until the unimaginable happens and their lives are changed forever.

As a man, Henry wrestles with the emotions and memories that come flooding back upon discovery of a treasure trove of artifacts left behind from a time long ago, a time when the country turned against its own citizens in fear and a time when a young boy was changed forever.

The story that is woven within the friendship of Henry and Keiko includes prejudice, not only from the whites, but also from Henry's family, as well as a love that tries against all odds to survive in a time when Americans were imprisoned on our own soil and hatred was an epidemic.