Race Relations in Guterson’s Snow Falling on Cedars
While the relationships between the Japanese and American citizens in novel are seemingly placid, because of their proximity to each other, Guterson contends that miscegenation is ultimately unattainable due to the cultural biases that keep both races apart.
The unwritten laws that dictate the relationship between the Japanese and the “hakujin” (58), or white islanders, provide a first example of how preconceived notions separate the two communities. As “twenty-four islanders of Japanese ancestry” sit in th