A resilient journey

Yet another memoir! This one was overall more interesting to me than the last one I read, and I also read this one in my university literature class so I got to enjoy some thought-provoking conversation concerning the book's imagery and underlying themes. The author of this memoir makes an emotional as well as physical journey, returning to her homeland of Kobe, Japan after 13 years of living as an independent woman in America. The main conflict surrounds her unresolved childhood trauma regarding the abusive and strained relationship she had with her father and the suicide of her mother when she was a young child. I know, pretty intense stuff... The main driver of my interest throughout the memoir revolved around my desire know if the author would end up having some sort of turning point or revelation where she would come to terms with the hurt her father caused her after her mother's death, that maybe there would be some semblance of a happy ending through the act of forgiveness. But that isn't what happens: the author makes time to see her father only once during her trip, and the meeting goes about as great as she expected, leaving her with more questions than answers. And she also sees family friends and high school acquaintances who reveal to her how different the Japanese culture is for women in comparison to the more freeing society American women enjoy. It was a very complex narrative in which I was trying to decide if the author was in denial about very real trauma and grief she had not let herself work through, or if she had grown hardened against the harsh realities of her life. I wasn't too satisfied with the rather pessimistic ending, but felt like it was interesting to track with the story of this resilient woman.

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One of my favorite quotes from The Dream of Water:

​"I realized it was fear that had kept me away for so long -- fear of this city, this country, of being plunged back into my mother's unhappiness..."

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