‘Memorial’: A Disjointed Story about Family

At the center of Bryan Washington’s “Memorial” are Mike and Ben. Mike is a Japanese-American chef and Ben is an African-American daycare helper. The story begins when Mike’s mother, Mitsuko, comes from Japan to visit him in Houston. On the same day, Mike takes a flight to Japan to visit with his dying father, Eiju, leaving Ben and Mitsuko, who have never met, to share an apartment until his unspecified return. The book is divided in two halves: one about Ben and Mitsuko living in Houston, and the other about Mike and his father in Osaka.

Thematically, “Memorial” is politically relevant, dealing with issues such as race, sexuality, gentrification, immigration, and social media. However, the meat of the story lies in parent-child relationships. Questions of race and sexuality merely serve as the backdrop for a family story. With this format, Washington has surpassed other contemporary literature — he has written a book about an interracial gay couple that is not primarily about race or sexuality. As a gay man, I found it refreshing to read about gay characters leading a “normal life,” without constantly hearing about how they are gay. Washington eschews explicit overreliance on individual identity as he chases that intangible essence of what it means to be human.

Unfortunately, “Memorial” comes up short structurally and stylistically. Since the bulk of the novel is split into two parts, one in Houston and one in Osaka, the reader loses sight of whichever story has been put on the backburner. Alternating chapters going back and forth between the two plotlines would have made the story more engaging. Washington tries to tie the two halves together by threading bits and pieces of Ben and Mike’s text messages throughout the novel. These smatterings of texts appear in both Ben and Mike’s section, so that the reader can contextualize the conversation from both points of view. Although using Ben and Mike’s text conversation as a throughline is an interesting idea, it ultimately falls flat because the conversation itself is so empty. Ben and Mike text each other infrequently, and when they do, the conversation is trivial and does not seem to be inspired by the events going on in the story. The most exciting texts we get are a question about grocery shopping and a spur-of-the-moment photograph. Without a solid linkage, the story in Houston and the story in Osaka feel isolated from one another.

In both Ben and Mike’s half of the novel, much of the narrative is split into short scenes. Washington gives a smattering of brief fragmented stories in hopes that they will come together to tell a bigger story. For example, Washington sprinkles several lists throughout Mike’s section: “A few of Eiju’s favorite things,” “Eiju’s favorite sounds,” “A brief list of Eiju’s favorite scents,” “Things [Mike’s] cooked for his father,” etc. “Memorial” reads almost like a collage. But since there are so many of these short excerpts, they begin to feel trite and maudlin. These bits of prose are not honed down enough to be poetry, yet they are not expanded upon enough to hold the emotional weight of other, longer prose. Stuck somewhere between poetry and short story, the individual scenes of “Memorial” start to lose power after a while, preventing it from reaching its full potential.