In her autoethnographic account, Simon-Maeda utilizes a postmodernist, interdisciplinary approach to highlight the multilayered, subjective, and socially mediated process of becoming a speaker of Japanese. Interweaving multiple sources of ethnographic data (e.g., interviews, pictures, highly personalized accounts, textual materials, field notes, transcripts, etc.), she paints an in-depth portrayal of her language acquisition and identity construction as a dynamic process of “being Japanese” within different communities of practice (i.e., family, career, and social life). These communities of practice are in constant flux and are influenced by local interactions, socialization practices, and societal discourses.

Paramount to her narrative is how her language acquisition and identity trajectories have evolved vis-à-vis dominant Japanese societal discourses concerning foreigners as outsiders, women as good mothers and wives, and American English speakers as occupying a prestigious social position in Japan. For example, she describes how her language acquisition and identity changed significantly when she had to learn how to perform the role of mother in relation to societal discourses surrounding the notion of a good mother. She describes her language ability as having developed through the accomplishment of a set of goals required to be successful in this particular social context (e.g., how to prepare and talk about preparation of bentos [lunch boxes] and how to use proper expressions in parent-teacher conferences). This strategy ultimately enabled her to navigate her son through the rigors of the Japanese education system. She provides equally convincing accounts of how her career and social life communities of practice contributed to her language learning and identity trajectories.

Overall, the rich, multilayered analysis as well as the clarity and balance with which she approaches the subject, makes this book worthwhile reading for researchers, teachers, and language learners alike. She argues convincingly, and her book shows us that it is indeed so, that autoethnographies can teach us much about the relationship between language learning, identity, and social contexts.