Polite Lies
On Being a Woman Caught Between Cultures
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
Twelve essays by a Japanese-American writer about being caught between past and present, old country and new.
In this powerful, exquisitely crafted book, Kyoko Mori delves into her dual heritage with a rare honesty that is both graceful and stirring. From her unhappy childhood in Japan, weighted by a troubled family and a constricting culture, to the American Midwest, where she found herself free to speak as a strong-minded independent woman, though still an outsider, Mori explores the different codes of silence, deference, and expression that govern Japanese and American women's lives: the ties that bind us to family and the lies that keep us apart; the rituals of mourning that give us the courage to accept death; the images of the body that make sex seem foreign to Japanese women and second nature to Americans. In the sensitive hands of this compelling writer, one woman's life becomes the mirror of two profoundly different societies.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
For the first 20 years of her life, Mori (The Dream of Water) felt straitjacketed by the Japanese culture in which she was raised; for the last 20, she has found liberation in Green Bay, Wis., of all places, where she teaches creative writing. In 12 plangent, autobiographical sketches, she recalls her experiences in both cultures and reflects on a series of defining issues, among them women, marriage, family, death, emotion, bodies and significant language characteristics. She claims she doesn't like to speak Japanese because to do so, "you have to agree on... which one of you is superior, how close you expect to be... and who defers." Although she excoriates the Japanese for elevating politeness above honesty, she values the comfort that traditions and rituals can offer, for example, at such times as death. This engagingly insightful discussion from one who has intimately experienced the two cultures is full of revelations about both.
