Turning Japanese: Memoirs of a Sansei - Hardcover

Mura, David

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0871134314 ISBN 13: 9780871134318

Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1991

Synopsis

A memoir of the author's journey to Japan, the country his grandfather had left at the turn of the century, chronicles his quest for identity in the face of shame and cultural dislocation

About this title

From the Publisher:

A journal of discovery by a poet and third-generation Japanese-American who explores the sense of difference that haunts him both at home and in Japan.

From Publishers Weekly:

An American poet of Japanese descent, Mura first went to Japan in 1984, to live in Tokyo for a year with his wife. He learned Japanese, studied Noh and Butoh dance, traveled and found himself receptive to aspects of a culture that many Americans have found off-putting. A record of his observations, this volume is imbued with a youthful, exploratory tone that takes on greater seriousness as Mura realizes that in the U.S. he had labored under a subtle discrimination. Amid "thousands of faces that look like mine" he discovers a sudden, heady sense of belonging. Yet ultimately this is his working-through of what it means to be an Asian who feels more at home in America than in his ancestral country ("too rule-oriented, too polite, too circumscribed"). Mura's effort is not without flaws--the dialogue can be awkward and the book, at 370 pages, would have profited from tightening. But it seems an honest account, and is at all times interesting.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 0871134314
• ISBN 13: 9780871134318
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 376