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4.0 

The Dream of Water

By Kyoko Mori
The Dream of Water by Kyoko Mori digital book - Fable

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Publisher Description

In 1990 author Kyoko Mori returned to her native Japan to visit the "landscape of my childhood." There--looking for the house in which her mother killed herself, running on land that was once water, and retracing childhood train trips to her grandparents' farm--she relived the memories and uncovered the secrets that unlocked her past. In The Dream of Water, a series of chapters that are themselves "small perfections," she leads us to the "larger happiness" of an autobiography that is also a work of art.

Japan is the land Mori fled as a teenager, seeking to escape from her cold, abusive father and her manipulative stepmother. It is the country she spend her adult life putting behind her, but it is also her homeland. As she searches through familiar neighborhoods and on distant islands, she is constantly aware of the culture she abandoned and the one she has adopted. Pushed by the sights and sounds of contemporary Japan into her interior world of memory and dreams, she also looks out toward the daylight land of America. A personal journey of discovery that is also an exploration of national difference, The Dream of Water explores intimate emotions that reveal profound cultural truths.

4 Reviews

4.0
“For those who have grown up under manipulative and toxic family, this book “hits home”. Mori is well-articulated and clearly depicts how much of our world and culture is understood by listening to authority figures like our parents. The parental roles, sometimes, play a stronger and more salient role in understanding our world than the subtle pervasiveness of culture. Maybe home is less about where it is, and more about where it is not.”

About Kyoko Mori

Kyoko Mori was born and raised in Kobe, Japan and moved to the United States as a teenager. Now a professor of Creative Writing, she has published her poetry and short stories in leading magazines such as The Kenyon Review, The Apalachee Quarterly, and Beloit Poetry Journal. She is the author of two novels for young readers, One Bird and Shizuko's Daughter, which was chosen as a Best Young Children's Book by The New York Times. She has also written two memoirs for adults, Polite Lies and The Dream of Water.

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