Harmless Like You by Rowan Hisayo Buchanan

If she didn’t burn, she’d rot.

When Jay was only two years old, his mother walked out on him and his father. Thirty-three years later, he’s feeling the strong urge to flee after the birth of his own child. The death of his father forces him to confront the mother who has always been a mystery to him. Why would a mother abandon her child? Is Jay destined to abandon his own family?

Life would’ve been easier if she’d had a sister. If there’d been someone with whom living wasn’t an act of translation

1968-1983: Yuki is adrift. At sixteen-years-old, after years of being “Yucky Yuki,” she finally has a friend.  Unfortunately, her family is planning to return to Japan soon. She asks her parents to let her stay in New York with her new friend Odile and they agree, with very little pushback. Yuki was already lonely and depressed, but she loses her only anchor when her parents leave her behind. She can’t find a place where she belongs.  Living in New York for most of her life has made her too American for Japan, yet she is still too Japanese for the Americans. She desperately wants to be an artist but isn’t very talented. She floats through life, latching onto whoever shows her interest. She is highly susceptible to toxic relationships. Her friendship with Odile sparks fast, but burns out just as quickly. Yuki’s first boyfriend is abusive, but she can’t bring herself to leave; he’s the only person who’s exclusively hers and she can’t imagine anything better for herself. Even her one chance at a healthy relationship is a giant misstep, destined to fail from the beginning. The only time she feels alive is when she’s hurting.

When I was a kid, I used to ask Dad, was it my fault Mommy left? He always said she’d just been an unhappy person. My old psychiatrist said it was ridiculous to blame my two-year-old self. I believed her, until I had a baby of my own.

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Yuki suspected all men of having some measure of violence. Some clubbed you with silence, and some relied on their fists. Feeling [his] fury, she was relieved, no longer becalmed in false gentleness.

The chapters alternate between Yuki’s coming-of-age tale and Jay’s struggle to come to terms with his mother’s abandonment, until they finally meet in Yuki’s Berlin apartment. Harmless Like You is about home, belonging, identity, and the importance of family bonds. There are no explosive revelations, but the characters’ inner turmoil is fascinating. Yuki is so passive, but I was riveted by her story. Anyone who has ever felt like an outsider will see a sliver of themselves in Yuki. During my reading I was anxious to find out why Yuki ran away and if Jay would follow the same course, but most of all I was curious to see if Yuki ever found what she was looking for.

Someday, she might be able to hold these photographs up as a lasting record of herself. People would look at them and recognise not her flat face or limp hair, but her true self, the Yuki behind the pupils. The Yuki who was the see-er not the seen.