In the Kappa Child, Hiromi Gotto describes her experience as an immigrant Japanese-Canadian. The author raises many comparisons and contradictions between Japanese and Canadian culture. This can be seen in her comparisons between her journey and that of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s, for example in the part where the narrator reads to her sisters and draws the comparison between the Wilders and her family “being pioneers” (p.41) and says to Slither “See, we’re like that right now, get it?”. In this same scene the juxtaposition between the two families is also evident, as PG asks if “Laura’s pa hit the ma” (p. 41), highlighting that unlike the somewhat idyllic family portrayed in Little House on the Prairie, this family is somewhat dysfunctional, and highlights the abuse that the girls and their mother endure from their father.  The narrator uses Little House on the Prairie as a way to try to understand her family’s journey from British Columbia to the Alberta prairies.

The narrator’s experience as of being Japanese-Canadian and being influenced by both cultures is also evident in her numerous descriptions of herself, for example “my daikon legs” and “bratwurst fingers”.  This struggle with identity is also alluded to when the narrator decides to rename her sisters with names that people in Canada could pronounce. It appears that this is quite significant for the narrator, she writes “What’s in a name? some people say. A great deal, was my conclusion”.

The narrator’s experience living in Canada and neither feeling truly Canadian or Japanese is a recurring theme throughout the novel. Hiromi Goto creates a counter-narrative by illustrating an “atypical” experience as an immigrant to Canada, through the narrator’s sexuality, physical appearance, and mythical elements in the story. I think that through this counter-narrative, the author challenges the concepts of borders (geographic, gender, sexuality) and the typical experience of migration.