Summer Bird Blue: A more in depth review

This review will not solely focus on the representation of asexuality, because this book covers a wide scope of issues. Rumi’s orientation is an important topic that is weaved throughout the novel, and it would feel unfair to ignore the rest of the contents just for the scenes about sexuality. It is important that we can see aspectrum characters exist outside of just talking about and exploring their orientation.

(will contain book spoilers)

Summer Bird Blue by Akemi Dawn Bowman is a book that will stay with me for a very long time. It follows Rumi Seto as she struggles with a world of emotion after losing her sister. Anger, sadness, confusion. Rumi’s grief seeps through the pages of this book to really just punch you in the gut – Akemi Dawn Bowman’s prose makes you feel this loss, feel the drowning that Rumi is going through figuratively (and once, literally).

Rumi cannot play music without feeling her sister there – but feeling her sister there means she must face up to her loss. Face up to the fact that she will never see Lea again, which is terrifying.

“What am I doing? Why am I playing my sister’s guitar, hoping to feel alive again? What is wrong with me?

Lea isn’t alive. She’s never will be again. I’m going to grow old without a sister – I’m going to live an entire lifetime without my best friend.

Playing her guitar – trying to feel alive again – it feels like I’m trying to move on. It feels selfish. And being selfish is the reason I’ll always hate myself for everything I did to Lea.”

Processing loss is never easy, and for Rumi, she has to deal with the fact that her sister has gone, but also that music feels like it’s slipping through her fingers, and she struggles with possibly not being able to find her way back to it. She internally fights with opposing ideas about music: that if she starts playing music again without Lea, it will be like leaving her behind, but also that if she does not play music again, then she will be denying Lea of her last wish. To finish the song that they were writing: Summer Bird Blue.

She feels Lea there while she plays, and the pain is often too much.

“Music has always made me feel closer to Lea. I guess even death couldn’t change that. Except it’s painful now, to think about Lea and to feel close to her. Which means listening to music is painful too.”

Something, I think, we commonly feel when grieving for the first time, is an insurmountable want to escape the pain. To escape the loss. We haven’t learned how to deal with it, how to sit with it and process the gap that the person has left in our lives, and how to interact with the world when we feel like part of it has left. Summer Bird Blue gives a very honest portrayal of this.

The characters of Summer Bird Blue are all so intensely human, and there is a showcase of how multiple different characters deal with the loss of Lea, but also how characters who never knew Lea, are also dealing with their own struggles. Rumi finds a common ground and company with her neighbour, Mr. Watanabe, who is dealing with the loss of his wife, who also played music. I loved their dynamic.

She also finds friendship in another neighbour: Kai, a very “pretty” surfer boy, who has conflicts over what he wants to do with his future, versus what his father wants him to do.

““My dad wants me to join the navy,” he replies simply. “So I guess I’m leaving fo’ boot camp at the end of the summer.”

“That doesn’t sound like it’s your idea,” I say.

He twists his jaw. “I don’t really have a choice. My dad doesn’t think parents should pay fo’ their kids’ college. He says they should learn to work fo’ themselves.” He shrugs. “Hawaii is expensive, you know? The military might be my only option.””

In terms of the aspec representation in this book, he is an important character because we see Rumi’s attraction to him. This reopens the path for Rumi to examine her orientation, because she can recognise that he is “pretty”, but this doesn’t necessarily mean for her that she is romantically or sexually attracted to him.

“He’s lean muscle from his shoulders to his feet and he has the darkest eyelashes I’ve ever seen on a guy. God, he really is pretty. And he knows it too, which makes the whole thing so much more annoying.”

This book was the first time in fiction that I had seen an example of aesthetic attraction explicitly separated from other forms of attraction. The prose describing Kai is beautiful and challenges us as well as Rumi, to examine why we assume that finding a character pretty has to be inherently romantic, as allonormativity dictates.

Rumi is questioning throughout the novel, and by the end of the novel, she is still somewhat questioning, and she tells Gareth that she would identify as asexual and arospec, but sexuality is complex, and she feels like the labels don’t necessarily explain completely what she wants them to, and she’s worried that she will change her mind. What I absolutely love about this is the acknowledgement that sexuality is not as clear cut as it can be thought .

I’ll leave you with this quote from Gareth:

“Den dey change dea’ mind. I don’t t’ink you have fo’ know right dis second. Whatchu, sixteen? Seventeen? I’m eighteen, and I no have all da answers fo’ everything. But dat’s da fun part – figuring everyt’ing out. I don’t want all da answers right now. I like try living instead.”

Links:

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