Polite Lies

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."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 WorldKyoko Mori is the author of three nonfiction books: Yarn: Remembering the Way Home; Polite Lies: On Being a Woman Caught Between Cultures; and The Dream of Water. Mori’s essay “Yarn” was selected for The Best American Essays 2004 and Polite Lies was shortlisted for PEN’s Martha Albrand Nonfiction Award.