The Dream of Water: A Memoir

by Kyoko Mori

Book Overview

An American poet explores her past and the meaning of memory and examines the two countries she knows well, Japan and America. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0449910431
• ISBN13: 9780449910436
• Release Date: January 1996
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.6" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

A complex, sad and intimate view of non-belonging

In this intensely personal memoir Kyoko Mori visits her home town of Kobe, Japan, in an attempt to come to terms with her mother's suicide and her estrangement from her father. She came to America at 20, seven years after her mother's suicide, and even then knew she would never return for more than a visit. Her memoir begins with an account of the immediate aftermath of her mother's death - the shrouded atmosphere of shock and grief, her maternal grandparents gentle consideration, her father's jarring insensitivity. It then jumps to 1990, as Mori, now an American, readies for departure from Green Bay, Wisconsin, where she teaches creative writing at the university. She has always been ambivalent about the country of her birth. When people ask her if she 'goes back,' she winces at their terminology and replies, ' 'I'd like to visit sometime, but there are other places I'd rather travel to if I had the money.' ' The trip is a sabbatical, justified as research for her stories and poems. She will spend four weeks sightseeing. Letters to her family are only sent from the airport: 'I could never get on the plane this morning if I had to see my family first thing upon arrival.' The people she has arranged to meet on arrival are, instead, Americans living in Japan and it is an American family she stays with. Mori skims over her four weeks traveling. She remains an outsider, treated as a foreigner. The Japanese she meets don't even expect her to speak Japanese. The reader pictures her in her American running shoes and sports clothes, a contrast to the Japanese women in dresses and lipstick, aloof in her tourist personna. But Mori begins to think she would feel alien anyway, even if she had not become so determinedly American. Kobe, where she grew up, is a modern, westernized city with little of Japanese tradition about it. The private school she went to, run by westerners, encouraged her non-conformist creativity. Even Japanese art does not move her. Upon her return to Kobe she agonizes over calling her father. She longs to see her other relatives - the maternal grandmother, aunts and cousins her father had forbidden contact with at the age of 13. Her paternal aunt and cousin who gave her so much sympathy and love in the difficult years after her father remarried. But she is Japanese enough to know that she must call her father first otherwise the others will feel awkward. The narrative is haunted by the guilt and grief she still feels over her mother's suicide, the bitterness she carries for her father. Until we meet him, it's easy to feel impatient with Mori as well as sympathetic. Sure, he was a cold, even viscious parent - depriving her of family, threatening to take her out of the school she loved, beating her for speaking her mind, full of psychological cruelties - but she also provoked him with her rash impetuosity. Perhaps Mori should be an adult about it and reconcile. How can he hurt her now? Then we meet her father and his callous behavi

Read slowly to savor

This is a book I relish so much, I limit myself to a chapter a day just to stretch out the enjoyment and savor each sentence. I am an American who has lived in Japan for seven years, and it is so interesting to see the view through her eyes -- she really does capture aspects of Japanese culture that are below the surface, not normally visible, but nonetheless palpable. This girl definitely has a way with words!

Going home isn't always easy

The prevailing message of Kyoko Mori's work is "going home is never easy." She never actually says it outright, however, instead opting to weave her life in America with her abused childhood and the people she encounters on her eight week trip to Japan. The story did not strike me as being "whiny" in any way, shape, or form. "Whiny" is a term better left for books that I have read that involve people complaining about their comfortable lives of little or no strife with their surroundings. Ms. Mori had valid points to discuss, even if they were depressing. A deeper message lies in the book -- you cannot change people. A perfect example is Hiroshi Mori, her father. Even as an old, sickly man, he has had no remorse or second - thoughts about the pain he has put his only daughter through, instead remaining a selfish, self centered old man. Her writing style is rich and filled with long, poetic sentences, and I wish she was *my* creative writing teacher. She fails to be self-pitying and offers her humility to the reader by gently feeding it to them, not pounding out paragraph after paragraph of remorse and sorrow. I enjoyed her anecdotes about her childhood and her (limited) memories of her family, and this book is just as good, if not better, than the other works she has written. It's so nice to have read such a consistently well versed author.

So touching, So Detailed

Kyoko Mori is an excellent writer. If you like Asian/ Japanese cultures and are interested in reading about it, this is the book for you. It's a sad tale/story about how Mori had to leave her life in Japan all because of her father and her "EVIL" stepmother. She returns to a sense of alienation. She somewhat regrets leaving but also thought it was for the best. This book relates to history of WWII, Japanese culture, lives of people back then.

Eloquent

Mori writes eloquently and beautifully about her journey to Japan and to her sad and haunting childhood. By reliving the past she is able to shed some of her pain and remorse and emerge a more complete and peaceful person. I loved it.