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Birds Crying

Minako Oba (trans. Michiko N. & Michael K. Wilson)

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Description:Loosely based on the author's own life, Birds Crying recounts six months in the lives of Yurie (nicknamed Yuri) Mama, a well-established middle-aged novelist; and her husband Shozo. Yurie is a free spirit and Shozo has retired early from the position of a salaryman (salaried white-collar employee) in order to relish life as a house-husband, the full-time secretary, cook, and dependent of his wife. Their only child, their daughter Chie, born overseas, has long since left the nest. Although their intellectual interests are poles apart-Shozo was trained as a chemist-their interactions with each other, often in the form of delightful repartee, reveal how their differences keep boredom at bay and add spice to their life. The main plot concerning Yurie dovetails with three the stories surrounding her cousin Mizuki, married to a German; her uncle Shigeru and his wife Fukiko; and Yurie's Chinese-American friend Lynn Ann and her husband Henry. A fine intermeshing of many unusual characters and a probing of the complex workings of Yurie s literary mind show the sophistication of Oba at her best. The result is a tapestry of extraordinary moments that expand and interconnect via interior monologues and dialogues ranging from the humorous and farcical to the somber and meditative. The narrator s voice and the characters conversations are filled with acutely perceptive social and cross-cultural commentaries. Long-forgotten incidents come back to life, triggered by the sight of an ancient tree, the name of a flower, or the crying of a bird, and memories spawn tales within tales. Despite the fact that the characters motives for their actions defy prediction, all of these seemingly disparate elements are woven into a coherent whole, a reflection of the interdependency of humanity and nature in its wholeness that is one of the many underlying threads of the story. It is not by chance that the names of the three main female characters are Yuri(e) (lily), Mizuki (dogwood), and Fuki(ko) (butterbur, a plant whose stalks are considered a delicacy in traditional Japanese cuisine). Impervious to romanticism or sentimentalism, Oba's own imaginative world is securely anchored in clear-eyed realism. It was shaped by the most real and surreal event of the twentieth century, the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Forever seared into the mind of the fifteen-year-old Oba, mobilized along with her schoolmates to provide assistance in the aftermath of the bombing, was the ghastly sight of survivors, barely alive, escaping the scorched air of the leveled city. Raised in a family that included progressive-minded grandparents, self-confident, assertive aunts, and parents whose overt mutual adoration was scandalous to say the least by prewar neo-Confucian, Japanese standards, Oba had been, as it were, inoculated against the totalitarian propaganda of the imperial regime under Emperor Hirohito. In postwar Japan, a four-year liberal arts education at Tsuda Women s College provided Oba respite, affirmation, and an intellectual grounding that would sustain her creatively and spiritually for years to come.We have made it easy for you to find a PDF Ebooks without any digging. And by having access to our ebooks online or by storing it on your computer, you have convenient answers with Birds Crying. To get started finding Birds Crying, you are right to find our website which has a comprehensive collection of manuals listed.
Our library is the biggest of these that have literally hundreds of thousands of different products represented.

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Format: PDF, EPUB & Kindle Edition

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ISBN: 189193676X

Description: Loosely based on the author's own life, Birds Crying recounts six months in the lives of Yurie (nicknamed Yuri) Mama, a well-established middle-aged novelist; and her husband Shozo. Yurie is a free spirit and Shozo has retired early from the position of a salaryman (salaried white-collar employee) in order to relish life as a house-husband, the full-time secretary, cook, and dependent of his wife. Their only child, their daughter Chie, born overseas, has long since left the nest. Although their intellectual interests are poles apart-Shozo was trained as a chemist-their interactions with each other, often in the form of delightful repartee, reveal how their differences keep boredom at bay and add spice to their life. The main plot concerning Yurie dovetails with three the stories surrounding her cousin Mizuki, married to a German; her uncle Shigeru and his wife Fukiko; and Yurie's Chinese-American friend Lynn Ann and her husband Henry. A fine intermeshing of many unusual characters and a probing of the complex workings of Yurie s literary mind show the sophistication of Oba at her best. The result is a tapestry of extraordinary moments that expand and interconnect via interior monologues and dialogues ranging from the humorous and farcical to the somber and meditative. The narrator s voice and the characters conversations are filled with acutely perceptive social and cross-cultural commentaries. Long-forgotten incidents come back to life, triggered by the sight of an ancient tree, the name of a flower, or the crying of a bird, and memories spawn tales within tales. Despite the fact that the characters motives for their actions defy prediction, all of these seemingly disparate elements are woven into a coherent whole, a reflection of the interdependency of humanity and nature in its wholeness that is one of the many underlying threads of the story. It is not by chance that the names of the three main female characters are Yuri(e) (lily), Mizuki (dogwood), and Fuki(ko) (butterbur, a plant whose stalks are considered a delicacy in traditional Japanese cuisine). Impervious to romanticism or sentimentalism, Oba's own imaginative world is securely anchored in clear-eyed realism. It was shaped by the most real and surreal event of the twentieth century, the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Forever seared into the mind of the fifteen-year-old Oba, mobilized along with her schoolmates to provide assistance in the aftermath of the bombing, was the ghastly sight of survivors, barely alive, escaping the scorched air of the leveled city. Raised in a family that included progressive-minded grandparents, self-confident, assertive aunts, and parents whose overt mutual adoration was scandalous to say the least by prewar neo-Confucian, Japanese standards, Oba had been, as it were, inoculated against the totalitarian propaganda of the imperial regime under Emperor Hirohito. In postwar Japan, a four-year liberal arts education at Tsuda Women s College provided Oba respite, affirmation, and an intellectual grounding that would sustain her creatively and spiritually for years to come.We have made it easy for you to find a PDF Ebooks without any digging. And by having access to our ebooks online or by storing it on your computer, you have convenient answers with Birds Crying. To get started finding Birds Crying, you are right to find our website which has a comprehensive collection of manuals listed.
Our library is the biggest of these that have literally hundreds of thousands of different products represented.

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Birds Crying

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