Venus Rising

ProfileIssue: Cancer 10

Linda Furiya Writes About Growing Up Japanese in the Midwest

“Many of the meals I ate at home in rural Indiana were Japanese. My mom used what ingredients she could get her hands on then put it out on the table effortlessly. The sensual aspect of Asian food and Mid-west sustainability is ingrained in me. Those are the basic roots of why I love cooking, “ says Linda.

As immigrants, Linda's parents approached the challenges of living in America and maintaining their Japanese diets with optimism and gusto. Meanwhile, Furiya was acutely aware of how food set her apart from her peers: she spent her first day of school hiding in the girls’ restroom, examining the rice balls and chopsticks her mom packed in her lunchbox and longing for a PB&J.

At eight, she began chronicling her thoughts and experiences. Then, at the age of eleven, Linda experienced her first taste of recipe development when she took a reserve blue ribbon for her chocolate chip cookie recipe at the county 4-H Fair.

As an adult, Linda re-discovered her love of writing at a marketing job for a small commercial developer in Washington D.C. where she wrote corporate collateral and newsletters. In 1991 Linda moved to San Diego, California. “From watching Charlie’s Angels and Chips, I thought southern California was the California.” Taking creative writing classes at San Diego State University’s extension classes, Linda found her voice writing a class assignment about her ethnic experiences in the Midwest. Relocating to San Francisco in 1992 was a monumental move. “I’ll never forget that day. It was a crisp, sunny, breezy San Francisco afternoon. I was wandering North Beach and remember feeling overcome with the happy feeling of coming home. I had never lived in a city so full of the Asian American element…and the food! It was life-changing.”

Rather than pursuing another job in marketing, Linda steered her career towards writing. Funneling inspiration from her writing classes and the Asian American scene in the Bay Area, she self-syndicated a column called “From Where I Stand.” For five years, this monthly column was published in Japanese American and Canadian newspapers in San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Sacramento, Seattle, Montreal, and Toronto Canada.

In 1996, Linda moved to Beijing, China. There she was able to fulfill a dream of writing travel and food-related articles and even a sex advice column.

Two years later, Furiya returned and soon after got her lucky break writing a food column for the San Francisco Chronicle on Japanese and Chinese cooking, which she still files. In 2000, she went back to China where she wrote her food column remotely, continued writing travel articles, attended a Chinese culinary school, and began the first draft of a food memoir that would eventually become "Bento Box In The Heartland: My Japanese Girlhood In Whitebread America."

Linda returned stateside in 2004 with her young son and wire-hair dachshund. In 2005, she visited Vermont. “The rolling hills and farms reminded me of the area I grew up in southern Indiana and the people and culture of San Francisco. I fell in love.” On a whim she moved with her son and dog.

Ready to settle down for a spell, Linda welcomes this time in Vermont to carve out for her son a childhood similar to hers revolving around food and country living.