Customer Reviews

A Room Full of Mirrors: High School Reunions in Middle America

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Considering that the high school reunion is a ritual nearly every adult American confronts at one time or another (whether s/he attends or not), it is surprising how taken for granted the phenomenon is. This book offers the perspective of an "outsider" (a Japanese woman) who lived in the U.S. for many years and who obviously "gets" American society and culture, but who can point out aspects that Americans themselves rarely notice. What sets this book apart from typical dry academic treatises is the narratives of reunion participants of various ages, told in their own words. The stories are engrossing and sometimes even moving, and whether you like all the characters or not, you'll probably find a bit of yourself in all of them.

It's too bad the reviewer below didn't tell us by whom this "has been done better before." I've never seen anything like it, and I've looked. (Another book, by an Israeli sociologist, on American high school reunions was published almost simultaneously. I haven't seen it yet, though it would be interesting to compare.)

As for the comment that this book is "is an attempt to get tenure by publishing a dissertation"...um, isn't that one of the things scholars are *supposed* to do? Or has publishing one's dissertation been classified as an underhanded trick, and no one bothered to tell me? Besides, as the author profile in the book states, the author teaches at a Japanese university, and is therefore outside the American tenure fray. I wonder if the reviewer actually read the book. The review reads more like a cheap shot by someone who for some reason or another holds a grudge against the author.

As one of the "informants" whose views are represented in Dr. Ikeda's study of the meaning, organization, and affect produced by and associated with high school reunions, I was understandably a bit nervous to see how "my culture" was represented by this "outsider" to a phenomenon that most Americans take completely for granted. I was not only pleased with the way my words were used and interpreted, but with the many, many ways the author brought new insights and perspectives to my own perceptions and experiences. This is something rare, and it points to the absolute necessity of having "outsiders" look in using the ethnographic method in respectful, insightful, ethical, and compassionate ways. I happen to be an anthropologist who studies "others" and Ikeda's work has helped me look at my own work in productive ways. For the non-scholar, the book offers the opportunity for cultural and personal self-discovery as well as the valuable opportunity to see that bridges can be crossed, "difference" is a matter of perspective, and everything that seems hopelessly strange can be a mirror into our own selves. Ikeda has done what I could never have done, which is to take something I thought I knew by heart and show me that I needed her perspective to learn more about my own. I highly recommend this for every kind of reader, but particularly for American women who cannot help but see themselves at every graceful turn the author takes.

This is the definitive work on that strange American ritual, the high school reunion. Informative, and even moving at times.