Evil Genius

 Creepy book (in a good way)

Evil Genius by Claire Oshetsky portrays a marvelously bizarre character who narrates the novel as well as portraying, in her words, her equally bizarre workmates, friends, husband, and other random people that she encounters. At one point, she says: “My life was meaningless, probably.“ (p. 176) Maybe just chaotic, maybe meaningless, generally surreal, I thought, while reading it.

For example, the narrator, Celia Dent, among many things, collected Barbie dolls. She had mutilated her first three dolls by stabbing them in the face with a nail-file. Later she had a huge, never-unboxed collection of them: 

“To make up for what I had done to those poor rubbery faces, I began to collect Barbie dolls in earnest. I took loving care of them. I never took those dolls out of their boxes. My mother encouraged my interest. She cleared out the pantry. Together we put up shelves and painted them pink. Over the years, my collection grew. Every birthday and every Christmas and every time I got an A on my report card, my mother gifted me a new doll for my collection. But it was maybe too late to reform me.” (p. 20)

Celia Dent’s inner life is full of violence. There’s some of it also in her physical life — as well as the “lives” of the Barbies. As she works in her job at a telephone company complaint center, and commutes from her home in Redwood City in the San Francisco Bay area into the city, her mind is full of oddities —

“I heard the same little song in my ear that I’d heard on the train the night before—love and death, love and death—and the people scurrying along the sidewalk with me, all those scurrying souls, yearning toward that train station, whipped their heads around and stared at me in wonder. Those people had heard my innermost secret thoughts. My body had shouted my secret thoughts out in every direction. All the thoughts I’d tried so hard to keep quiet. Thoughts about love and death, is what I mean. Thoughts about how love could be a land mine buried in a shimmering field of wheat, or a pistol shot, or a sticky trap set in a corner, or a noose, or an insidious addiction—and so could death be all these things.” (p.75)

She sees herself in odd ways, sometimes by imagining her father of whom she knows nothing whatsoever, but speculates that he might be the subject of a photo with the name “Dirk” written on the back. Her mother won’t tell her anything. But she creates an identity for herself —

“I remembered what I had always known: I was Daughter of Dirk. I was Minion of the Crab Queen. I was in a full fever. I wasn’t a normal girl. I was supernatural. I was uncanny. I was magnificent.“ (p. 117) 

Most critically, she’s a witness at a very bizarre and violent death scene, which I can’t tell more about because it would be a terrible spoiler (and I’ve already spoiled a bit). Anyway — upon being held in jail she ruminates on refusing to talk: 

“As was my right. Remaining silent had been my right ever since Ernesto Miranda’s landmark case in 1966. Think of it. One man, named Ernesto, single-handedly altered the dialogue in every climactic scene in every true-crime show and police procedural to come, forevermore, and what’s more, thanks to Ernesto, I was walking away a free woman, but with a soul still burdened by my unconfessed crimes.” (p. 206) 

The New York TImes review was complimentary about Evil Genius. The reviewer focuses on the era of 1974 as depicted in the novel: “Revolution was in the air, and to be young was very heaven. Or very hell, according to 19-year-old Celia Dent, the narrator of Evil Genius. Claire Oshetsky’s noir delight of a novel … Evil Genius alludes to Hearst, Watergate and other flashpoints of the era as Celia seeks freedom beyond the narrow cage of her life. Now older, she peers back some 50 years to a moment of transformation.” (source)

Review © 2026 mae sander

Friendship Dolls from Japan, 1927

Three original “Friendship Dolls” from 1927 are currently on display at the
Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA). Fifty-eight of these dolls were a gift from Japan.

Each doll represented a prefecture of Japan. This is “Miss Akita” from Akita Prefecture.
As far as I know, the dolls’ costumes do not reflect folk costumes from their regions.
Their kimonos and accessories represent the skilled fabric arts and designer traditions in Japan.

Each doll was shipped with a number of accessories such as doll furniture and doll dishes.
The dolls were 32 inches tall, and had individualized faces and human hair wigs.

The faces are crafted from powdered clamshells (gofun) with glass eyes.

The history of these dolls begins in the mid-1920s, with an American organization called the Committee on World Friendship Among Children founded by a former missionary to Japan named Dr. Sidney Gulick. Groups throughout the US, such as scout troops, church youth groups, and schools, donated over 12,000 dolls to send to Japanese children. The dolls were supposed to be “typical” Americans, and to be purchased at toy stores or department stores, with ordinary purchased or hand-made clothing. Gulick wanted to fight against a wave of anti-American sentiment in Japan at the time, which was a response to the Immigration Act of 1924 that prohibited Japanese immigration to the US.

Almost all the collected dolls represented white children or babies, and had blue eyes. Thus in Japan, they were called “Blue-Eyed Dolls.” A small number of Black organizations also participated in contributing dolls to send to Japan; for example, an article in the New York Times, January 9, 1927, describes one such effort:

“The Cradle Room members and the pupils in the kindergarten of St. James Negro Presbyterian Church, 59 West 137th Street, will send a colored American doll, 22 inches high, as a ‘Friendship Doll' to the little children of Japan along with hundreds of other dolls soon to sail under the Doll Travel Bureau. The latter is a part of the Commission on International Relations and Good-will of the Federal Council of Churches.” (source)

Although no reciprocal gesture was expected, a Japanese group called the Committee on International Friendship among Children in Japan commissioned the hand-made dolls from two famous hand-crafted doll makers. The dolls wore elegant silk kimonos, each embroidered with a “family crest,” along with other typical items of clothing.

Two Boy Dolls

The DIA included two boy dolls in the exhibit, though these were not part of the original
Friendship-Doll offering. This doll is named Akita Sugi-O, and was made in 2018.

This is Tomoki, made in the 1930s.

The third case in the DIA exhibit includes two boy dolls named  Tomoki and Akita Sugi-o. They are similar to  the Friendship Dolls in the displays nearby. These are called ichimatsu dolls, which depict children and wear traditional Japanese clothing. Akita Sugi-o, was made in the late 1930s  by craftsman Takizawa Koryusai II (1888-1966), who also made one of the Friendship Dolls. Tomoki is a modern doll, made in 2018 for the DIA by Kokan Fujimura (born 1953). Kokan is one of the few artists in Japan who still creates dolls in the same traditional manner as the Friendship Dolls.

From the Detroit Art Institute: Doll Accessories

A tea set.

Accessories for the boy dolls.

A chest of drawers and musical instruments for one of the girl dolls.

Travel trunks and a “passport” for the traveling doll.

Traditional tea ceremony vessels and utensils.

The Japanese Friendship Dolls and their accessories were sent to a number of US cities in the fall of 1927, reaching some of the organizations that had sent dolls to Japan earlier that year. The dolls arrived in San Francisco and were sent around the US a few at a time, to reach many towns and cities. Eventually they were donated to local museums and libraries. Many of them remain in the original locations; others are now held by private collectors, and a few have been lost. The DIA borrowed some of the dolls and used others from their own collections.

Photos by mae sander taken at the DIA on March 16, 2024.

Blog post and photos © 2024 mae sander.