Polite Lies - by Kyoko Mori (Paperback)

About the Book

Twelve penetrating, painful essays explore the author's codes of silence, deference, and expression that govern Japanese and American women's lives and the images of the body that make sex seem foreign to Japanese women and ever-present to Americans.

Book Synopsis

Kyoko Mori's life falls into two halves: childhood in Japan, adulthood in the Midwest. In both places she has been an outsider, unable to quite mimic everyone's polite lies. In twelve penetrating, painful, and at times hilarious essays, she explores the codes of silence, deference, and expression that govern Japanese and American women's lives. Throughout, Mori examines the paradox at the center of her own life: she is too Japanese to trust irrational feelings such as love or grief and too American to live a life built on denying them. Standing in this painful place of perfect honesty, Mori explores the ties that bind us to family and the lies that keep us apart, the rituals of mourning that make death human, and the images of the body that make sex seem foreign to Japanese women and ever-present to Americans.

Review Quotes

"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 the Author

Kyoko 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.