Polite Lies: On Being a Woman Caught Between Cultures - Softcover

Mori, Kyoko

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0449004287 ISBN 13: 9780449004289

Publisher: Random House Publishing Group, 1999

Synopsis

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.

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Review

Kyoko Mori spent a largely unhappy childhood chafing at social restrictions in Japan before migrating to the American Midwest. In 12 beautifully turned essays she shuttles between these two cultures, observing local customs with a wondering eye. Too bold to be emotionally fluent in either land, Mori scrutinizes--and sometimes ridicules--the sound of a woman's voice raised in a childish squeak; the differences between Americans who marry for love (and divorce the day it dissolves) and traditional Japanese women, who may be more likely to find happiness in an honorable widowhood; and the navigation of uncomfortable truths and painful emotions. "Having a conversation in Japanese is like driving in the dark without a headlight," she says. "Every moment, I am on the verge of hitting something and hurting myself or someone else, but I have no way of guessing where the dangers are." Despite frustration and puzzlement, Mori rarely swerves even to make her own limitations more palatable.

From the Back Cover

"A small universe of memory and reflection, analysis and synthesis, presented with an artist's touch."
--The Boston Sunday Globe

"A BEAUTIFUL BOOK . . . Her prose has the deceptive simplicity of a Japanese garden. By itself, each element seems to be plain and unadorned, but, in combination, the effect is stunning."
--Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Kyoko Mori is "uniquely qualified to write at an intersection many have visited but few have truly understood."
--The Washington Post Book World

About this edition

• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0449004287
• ISBN 13: 9780449004289
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272