Chapters (77)
- Cover
- Dedication
- 1
- 2
- A Series of Screw-ups: The Chisaki Joan Katsuyama Story, Part I
- 3
- The History of My Beef with Brynn Foer-Preston
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- The History of the Katsuyama Family, Part I
- 8
- 9
- A Brief History of Chisaki Joan Katsuyama’s Romantic Learning Opportunities, Part I
- 10
- 11
- 12
- A Brief History of Chisaki Joan Katsuyama’s Romantic Learning Opportunities, Part II
- 13
- The History of the Katsuyama Family, Part II
- 14
- 15
- 16
- 17
- 18
- 19
- The Complicated History of Chisaki Joan Katsuyama’s Imaginary Relationship with Her Nonexistent Dad
- 20
- 21
- 22
- A Brief History of Chisaki Joan Katsuyama’s Romantic Learning Opportunities, Part III
- 23
- 24
- 25
- A Brief, Backward History of the McAllister Family, as Paraphrased from the San Jose Mercury News
- 26
- 27
- 28
- A Quick and Eerily Relevant History of Asians in America
- 29
- 30
- 31
- 32
- 33
- 34
- 35
- 36
- A Brief History of Chisaki Joan Katsuyama’s Romantic Learning Opportunities, Part IV
- 37
- 38
- 39
- 40
- 41
- 42
- 43
- 44
- A Series of Screw-ups: The Chisaki Joan Katsuyama Story, Part II (Or Maybe It’s a Prequel)
- 45
- 46
- 47
- 48
- 49
- 50
- 51
- 52
- 53
- The History of the Katsuyama Family, Part III
- 54
- A Note from the Author
- Index of Flowers and their Meanings
- Acknowledgments
- About the Author
- Praise for This Time Will Be Different
- Books by Misa Sugiura
- Back Ad
- About the Publisher
“I’m gonna miss Heart’s Desire,” says Em.
“Yeah, same.”
“How do you feel, now that it belongs to the McAllisters again?”
“Sad, I guess? Hannah says it’s fate.” Flax, I think automatically.
“Do you think it’s fate?”
I’ve thought about this one. “No,” I say. “Calling it fate makes it seem like there’s nothing you can do to change a bad situation, before or after it happens. But you can.”
“You can’t change a bad thing after it happens.”
“But you can try to make things better now. You can make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
People talk about starting over after they’ve made a big mistake or a bad choice in life. But you can never really start over. You can’t fully reset. And I don’t think you should. There’s no point in dwelling on the past, but you can acknowledge it and try to make things better. Or try a new way, and know that this time will be different.
A Note from the Author
Sometimes a new discovery can transform a story you thought you understood and make it come alive in ways you don’t anticipate.
A few years ago, I learned that my late Japanese Canadian uncle was named after Mackenzie King, the prime minister who would eventually order all Japanese Canadians to be sent to internment camps during World War II. How had my uncle felt, I wondered, as he entered the gates of Tashme Internment Camp at twelve years old, bearing the name of the man who had sent him there? How had he felt decades later?
Because I couldn’t stop wondering, I wrote this book.
This Time Will Be Different has changed quite a lot since its early drafts, but the questions driving it have always been the same.
How are we affected—as victims and as perpetrators—by the failures of the past? How do we measure the harm done to us as individuals, and as families, and as communities? How do we decide what to let go? What to forgive? What to carry into the future?
I hope this book has made you laugh and cry and fall in love. I hope that it will spark conversations about taking a closer look at our personal and collective histories, how to take responsibility for those histories, and what it takes to move forward. And as our public discourse sounds increasingly, disturbingly familiar, I hope that CJ’s story will inspire us all to make sure that this time really will be different.
