How Indigo Girl finds herself in Suzanne Kamata’s new novel

Book Review by Gracy Samjetsabam

Title: Indigo Girl

Author: Suzanne Kamata

Publisher: Gemma Media (2019)

Indigo Girl is a coming-of-age novel by Suzanne Kamata, an award-winning novelist who resides in Japan. A sequel to the young adult novel Gadget Girl, a book that won multiple awards including the APALA (Asia Pacific American Award for Literature) Honor award in 2013-2014, the story centres around the life of the protagonist, Aiko Cassidy.

Aiko is a biracial and a bicultural teenager with cerebral palsy. Raised by a single mother, who now has a new family, she questions her idea of belonging and home. She yearns to know more about her biological father and the many questions that shroud her existence.

Aiko is excited about her summer break and looks forward to the solo trip from Michigan (USA) to Tokushima (Japan). It is her first visit to Japan, the place she describes as “where I belong” as she pictures it as “the land of Ghibli and iced matcha lattes, land of indigo and cat cafes and manga and J-pop”. Although she is 15 and has cerebral palsy, she is independent and confident like any other teen and thinks that she is old enough to speak for herself. The trip that was meant to be a summer getaway —  to connect to her biological father and to inspire the book she was working on — ends up opening a whole new window to life for Aiko.