Esther's Smile: Silence and Action in Hisaye Yamamoto's "Wilshire Bus" - Critical Essay

Studies in Short Fiction, Wntr, 1998 by Maire Mullins

Of consciousness and agency, particularly for women, Teresa de Lauretis describes

   the paradox of a being that is one captive and absent in discourse,
   constantly spoken of but of itself inaudible or inexpressive, displayed as
   spectacle and still unrepresented or unrepresentable, invisible yet
   constituted as the object and the guarantee of vision; a being whose
   existence and specificity are simultaneously asserted and denied, negated
   and controlled. (115)

Audre Lorde's "The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action" and Hisaye Yamamoto's short story, "Wilshire Bus" show how this paradox--of being spoken about, seen, displayed yet also silenced, invisible, and controlled--unfolds in the ordinary, everyday lives of women. Lorde, through her battle with a deadly and debilitating disease, claims agency and voice, and challenges her readers to take transformative action. Yamamoto shows how one such transformative moment occurs, and then passes into silence because of the fear that incapacitates the story's main character, Esther Kuroiwa.

In her essay, Lorde immediately confronts her reader by naming (and thereby owning) the differences that may cause anxiety for some in her audience. She writes:

   Perhaps for some of you here today, I am the face of one of your fears.
   Because I am woman, because I am Black, because I am lesbian, because I am
   myself--a Black woman warrior poet doing my work--come to ask you, are you
   doing yours? (Lorde 41-42)

By describing her battle against breast cancer, Lorde establishes community with her audience: a sense of powerlessness in the face of illness creates common bonds between reader and writer. Suffering from cancer has given Lorde a heightened awareness of what she describes as an even more deadly debilitation--her own silences. Silence, particularly when self-imposed, robs not just the one who chooses not to speak, but also the community as a whole. Waiting "for someone else's words," Lorde writes, will not protect those who witness and remain silent. Lorde uses questions to nudge her readers into response: "What are the words you do not yet have? What do you need to say? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence?" (41). Lorde's testimony and her technique of asking questions draw the reader in, forcing self-recognition. The ideas about silence, about fear, and about the power of language that Lorde expresses so forcefully and effectively in her essay become even more apparent when Yamamoto's "Wilshire Bus" is read alongside Lorde's essay.

"Wilshire Bus" is the story of Esther Kuroiwa, a Japanese-American woman who "takes the yellow bus" up and down Wilshire Boulevard twice a week to visit her husband, who is in a hospital ("Wilshire Bus" 34). Set in post-World War II Los Angeles, the action of the story focuses on a particular bus ride. The setting is significant: the choice of Los Angeles, a West Coast city where many Japanese settled before the war, and the hostility felt toward the Japanese during and after the war, become important factors in the story. In her introduction to "Seventeen Syllables": Hisaye Yamamoto, a collection of critical essays on Yamamoto, King-Kok Cheung notes that

   World War II drastically altered the Japanese community in America. Within
   four months of the bombing of Pearl Harbor over 110,000 Japanese Americans
   were forced to abandon homes, farms, and businesses all through the West
   Coast and were detained in various internment camps. (6)

The psychological effects of this kind of treatment were devastating: the Japanese community, already struggling with anti-immigrant sentiment, now also had to cope with vitriol, hatred, and suspicion. "Any extensive literary treatment of the Japanese in this country would be incomplete without some acknowledgement of the camp experience," Yamamoto writes. "It is an episode in our collective life which wounded us more painfully than we realize" ("... I Still Carry It Around" 69). Yamamoto was sent to the Poston Relocation Camp in Arizona when she was 20 years old.

As "Wilshire Bus" begins, Esther Kuroiwa is on her way to visit her hospitalized husband. Esther has "always enjoyed the long bus ride very much because her seat companions usually turned out to be amiable, and if they did not, she took vicarious pleasure in gazing out at the almost unmitigated elegance along the fabulous street" (34). Gazing away in silence is a habit Esther has cultivated. It is also a response that may be cultural, designated as enryo, "the denial of something proffered even though the item is wanted, the acceptance of a less desired object even if given a choice, and the hesitancy to ask questions or make demands" (Yogi 158n11). This habit of gazing away in silence, along with her own self-consciousness about her Japanese identity, will precipitate Esther's committing "a grave sin of omission which caused her later to burst into tears and which caused her acute discomfort for a long time afterwards whenever something reminded her of it" (34).