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
We barrel through Rogue Valley, past little gray rabbits that freeze, then dart back into the brush, past a flock of wild turkeys. As the valley narrows, the trail makes a sharp left to double back and uphill for a mile. We continue walking, the only sound our breath, the crump, crump, crump of our feet on the dusty trail, and the blackbirds chirping in the bushes around us. We pass within a few feet of a mother deer and her adolescent fawn picking their way slowly through a thicket of manzanita bushes, under a canopy of coastal live oak trees. I pause, pull out my phone, and turn to take a picture, but Mom refuses to slow down: “We’re behind schedule, hon—I have a video conference at eight o’clock. Come on, let’s pick up the pace.”
A Series of Screw-ups: The Chisaki Joan Katsuyama Story, Part I
I bet you think I’m exaggerating. But I’m confident that when I’m finished, you’ll see things my way.
Exhibit A: My Conception
The specifics remain vague (ew, not those specifics), but according to the cautionary tale Mom told me when I got my first period, it may have happened in a hotel room at a conference after a night of heavy drinking.
Yep. I know.
Exhibit B: My Birth
I arrived two weeks early (“The last time CJ was ever early for anything,” the joke goes). To add insult to injury, my early arrival was announced by a pop and a theatrical burst of amniotic fluid in the middle of an important presentation that Mom was giving at work.
Exhibit C: Ballet Lessons
It was winter of third grade, and I was the star of my ballet class’s annual holiday recital performance: we danced to “Waltz of the Flowers,” and I got to stand alone in the middle of a ring of my classmates, the flower amid a swirl of adoring butterflies. After the recital, Mom pulled me out of ballet, and I could not understand why she’d cut short what was surely going to be a long and illustrious career as a ballerina.
A couple of years ago, I stumbled across a video of the recital. In it, I do, indeed, stand out—but not for the reasons I had always imagined. In the parts where I dance with my class, I am happy but clueless, awkwardly copying the movements of the girl next to me, one beat late. I wasn’t chosen to be the flower in the center because I was talented. I was chosen because I was terrible.
Exhibit D: Soccer, Coding Camp, Piano Lessons, etc. etc. etc.
A veritable garden of participation trophies and failures learning opportunities.
Exhibit E: My Last Effort