by Samantha Fitch
August 9, 2022
Samantha Fitch is currently an instructor of English at Yavapai College in Prescott, Arizona. She graduated with a PhD in Literary Criticism from Indiana University of Pennsylvania, with a focus on Thing Theory and Gender Studies. She enjoys working on a wide variety of projects, including editing and her contributing work to Livingstone Online. She also volunteers her time to women’s and maternal health organizations.
Diary of a Void by Emi Yagi; Penguin Publishing Group; 224 pages; $23.00
Emi Yagi’s debut novel Diary of a Void confronts the issue of sexism and its ramifications, manifested by a narrative journey of personal growth. Under the overarching theme of birth and formation, Yagi successfully reveals the ways in which misogyny affects everything in a woman’s life, from crucial events to the quotidian. At the same time, she offers her readers a glimpse into the clever and often necessarily clandestine ways that women work their way through and around hegemony. At times, it even reads like a psychological thriller as escalating suspense fills the latter half of her novel. In a surprising twist, this chronical of a young woman’s coming-of-age tale as she grapples with male chauvinism is subtly transformed into a tale filled with a gripping uncertainty.
The plot underscores how the ideal of gender parity can in fact conceal the entrenchment of gender inequality. Set in modern-day Japan, Yagi’s novel introduces Shibata, a young woman who left one job to avoid sexual harassment from customers and from her boss. She is hired elsewhere precisely because she is an educated woman. Her new job is an unexciting respite, yet she is tired of being given menial tasks. It is assumed that Shibata will accept this tedium because she is a woman; the men in the company not only refuse to make the coffee and clean up the messes—they do not even know how to do it. Tired of these mind-numbing, unpromotable duties, Shibata spontaneously declares that she cannot do them any longer because she is pregnant. Shibata, however, is not pregnant. This is the beginning of a lie, but also the germination of a new life for Shibata.
The effects of her lie are immediate; her wearisome labors at work are replaced with a future labor that will bring a new life into Shibata’s world. Yagi’s simple and realist style carries the reader through the initial chapters, where the disparity between Shibata’s life before and after her pregnancy announcement are thrown into sharp relief. Shibata notices that the men begin to treat her with “deference” after the pregnancy announcement. Focusing on this stark reality, Yagi describes the many opportunities that were previously denied to Shibata because of her long working hours. But a pregnant body comes with negatives too, in the form of other invasions. A male coworker asks to touch her belly, and discusses her sex life and his shock at her pregnancy—a reminder that the escape from patriarchal oppression isn’t a straightforward path.
Eventually, Yagi’s authentic style deftly begins to shift into something more fantastical, and the boundaries between the physical and the psychological, between truth and fallacy, begin to dissipate. The tension and suspense that is aroused in the reader by the lie in the first half of the book slowly transform into something more mystifying. The lie grows in length and proportion to the progression of a pregnancy, getting bigger as the growing life inside comes to fruition. Yagi carries this metaphor through to such an extent that at times the reader will question not only Shibata’s reality, but their own understanding of the storyline. For instance, the reader is swept up in bewilderment as Shibata has multiple ultrasounds. Yagi also ties in a connection between her lead character and biblical Mary, another mother with a miracle child, which at times prompts the reader to wonder at the nature of Shibata’s miracle. Shibata reflects, “But if I’d already come this far, what was stopping me from going anywhere I wanted?" This seems to be Yagi’s own refrain for the last chapters of the novel. The reader’s growing disorientation is steady, purposeful, and powerful. Shibata muses, “There was a baby in there. It had a place in the world. It had taken its own form, a human form. Out of nothing." Much like Shibata’s miracle child, it is in these last chapters that the soul of the novel takes shape and Yagi carries her metaphor through to fruition; Shibata has created the potential for a new life and can reclaim her dormant power as an individual and, significantly, as a woman.
Virginia Woolfe implored for every woman to have a room of her own; Yagi argues for a space of one’s own, even if the space is invisible. “Even if it’s a lie, it’s a place of my own. That’s why I’m going to keep it. It doesn’t need to be a big lie—just big enough for one person to fit. And if I can hold on to that lie inside my heart, if I can keep it up, it might lead me somewhere. Somewhere else, somewhere different. If I can do that, maybe I’ll change a little, and maybe the world will, too." In the last pages of the novel, Shibata has reclaimed her sovereignty. Determined not to waste her opportunity, she uses her fabrication—now transformed into an internal truth—to change her life, inspiring other women in the novel to reclaim their autonomy. Shibata began with a lie that reimagined her life; eventually that lie took shape into authenticity. Through this gripping metamorphosis, Yagi masterfully reveals to her readers the shortfalls of progress, the dominance of patriarchy, and the timeless, profound power of women.
©2022 West Trade Review
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The Power of Birth: Metaphor and Metamorphosis in Emi Yagi’s Diary of a Void
FICTION REVIEW
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