Foot - Letters from Japan: I (heart) Novels

Before reading I (heart) Novels, I had never even heard of Cell Phone Novels, and even now it amazes me...my thumbs would get tired.

From the article, I gathered that this particular type of writing is preferred by young girls, which I found very interesting. I mean, what girl doesn't remember being 13 on up and chatting with friends about all the extreme drama going on in their lives? Now a days, it's not just talking it's texting. Instead of just the seemingly inconsequential story lines of one would expect from a teen, the stories that emerge from Cell Phone Novels are emotional and thought-provoking. An example of the kinds of emotional stories being told through Cell Phone Novels, is a book called "Love Sky,” by Mika that describes the story of a girl who, in her Freshman year, "falls in love with a rebel named Hiro, and is raped by a group of men incited by Hiro’s ex-girlfriend. Then Mika gets pregnant with Hiro’s child, and he breaks up with her. Later, she finds out why: he is terminally ill with lymphoma and had hoped to spare her" (Goodyear ¶ 9). The article goes on to explain that the, "the moral of the story is not that sex leads to all kinds of pain, and so should be avoided, but that sex leads to all kinds of pain, and pain is at the center of a woman’s life" (Goodyear ¶ 9).

The good things about Cell Phone Novels are that young women are finding new and innovative ways to express themselves using a piece of technology that has taken the entire world by storm. I don't got anywhere without my cell phone; having that constant outlet for creativity is absolutely great. Another pro of the Cell Phone Novel is that, "miraculously, books have become cool accessories. 'The cell-phone novel is an extreme success story of how social networks are used to build a product and launch it,' Yoshida, the technology executive, says. 'It’s a group effort. Your fans support you and encourage you in the process of creating work—they help build the work. Then they buy the book to reaffirm their relationship to it in the first place'" ( Goodyear, Yoshida ¶ 18).

Some cons of the Cell Phone Novel could be the lack of grammar and a fear that actual literature will fall by the wayside. Grammar probably goes out the window - and in the firsts section of the article it is explained that one author, Mone, "started posting her novel straight from her phone to a media-sharing site called Maho i-Land (Magic Island), never looking over what she wrote or contemplating plot (Goodyear ¶ 2). Another fear of some would be that traditional Japanese Literature would become out of date, “Everyone in publishing received this as an enormous shock to the system, and wondered, What is happening here?” Mikio Funayama, the editor of Bungakukai, a respected monthly literary journal" (Funayama ¶ 14).

The pros and cons of the Cell Phone Novels are something to consider when considering using this in your classroom. I love the idea of using this during a unit on creative writing. Students could collect appropriate texts from a certain period of time, like over a weekend, and then they could piece the texts together into a story. Or they could simply compose on their cell phones whenever they wanted and post it on a sight that could be reviewed by the teacher.

I'm excited about the Cell Phone Novels and I look forward to it becoming a bid deal in the U.S.