The book, which was released last month, tells the story of Shoko, a Japanese woman who married an American GI after World War II. Saturday at Hawaii Kai Public Library, 249 Lunalilo Home RoadĪfter several years of rewrites and searching for an agent - not to mention raising three kids and moving to Hawaii - Dilloway found a publisher for her first novel, "How to Be an American Housewife" (Putnam Books, $24.95), based on her strained relationship with her own mom. Most surprising thing about Hawaii: "That there are so many writers living here. "There are many more that I can say I love, but I think those five have given me the most ‘aha’ moments as a writer and made me improve in some way." Scott Fitzgerald, Ray Bradbury, Amy Tan, Anne Tyler. Hobbies: Crafts, scrapbooking, snorkeling, stand-up paddle surfing MARGARET DILLOWAYĪuthor of "How to Be an American Housewife" (Putnam Books, $24.95)įamily: Married to Keith Dilloway, with three kids
She was pregnant with her third child and wondered how strange it must have been for her mother to live in an American suburb, how isolated she must have felt. "But I kept thinking about it," she said.Ībout five years later, she thought again about that handbook for Japanese housekeepers she had found among her mother’s cookbooks. It got a staged reading at a festival there, but Dilloway never developed it further. In 1999, while living in Lakewood, Wash., she wrote a one-act play about a Japanese mother and her daughter and their various misunderstandings. It turned out that many American men thought that way, too, and bought the handbook for their Japanese war brides.
"My dad thought the book was for housewives," said Dilloway, 36, a stay-at-home mom who lives in Hawaii Kai with her husband, Keith, and three children. The couple met in Iwakuni when her dad, who grew up in Pennsylvania, was stationed there with the Navy. Written in both English and Japanese, it provided a guide for how to do everything from cooking proper American food and using household appliances to cleaning room to room in a precise sequence.ĭilloway’s mom, Suiko, who was from Kumamoto, Japan, had received the book from her father after they wed. "The American Way of Housekeeping" was, essentially, a handbook created by the wives of American officers for their Japanese housekeepers soon after World War II ended. After her mother passed away 15 years ago, Margaret Dilloway found a copy of a book stashed in a drawer at the family’s San Diego home.
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