Use these links to supplement and complement students’ reading of the work and to increase their overall enjoyment of literature. Challenge them to discern parallel themes, engage through visual and aural stimuli, and delve deeper into the thematic possibilities presented by the title.

Recommended Texts for Pairing

Anagrams by Lorrie Moore

• Lorrie Moore’s contemporaneous portrait of love and grief features a similar structure, with a tangentially related narrative that comments and expands on themes from earlier parts of the book.
• addresses similar themes of Death and Finding One’s Purpose/Moving On

Palm-of-the-Hand Stories by Yasunari Kawabata

• Kawabata’s Nobel-winning prose influenced a generation of writers in Japan.
• Many of the spare stories in this collection address themes of Death and Finding One’s Purpose/Moving On.

Tampopo (1985), dir. Juzo Itami

• Itami’s “ramen Western,” a wide-ranging comedy about a widow and the man who takes her under his wing to make the best ramen restaurant in town, provides another view of grieving people turning to food for comfort and purpose.
• engages the themes of Gender Roles and Finding a Sense of Purpose/Moving On

Other Student Resources

The Coming of Age of Transgender Representation in Japan

• This well-researched Medium article for An Injustice! provides an excellent overview of the history of transgender identity in Japan and a thoughtful explication of Eriko’s transgender identity in the novel.