On being an Asian American writer
Kyoko Mori, Briggs-Copeland Lecturer
in Creative Writing at Harvard, told her John Carroll audience last night
what it's like to be an Asian American author, with a decided emphasis on
"American." "I feel as much like a midwesterner as I
feel like a Japanese," she said, and recalled reading western authors
before Japanese. "In high school I discovered Jane Austen, and
I've never been the same." Describing her sense of home,
"when you don't live in the place of your childhood anymore,"
she spoke of how a visit to the Impressionist wing at the Cleveland Museum
of Art evoked her experience of viewing similar paintings as a
child. "There I was, 30 years later, standing in the same space
my Mother and I had occupied on that gray day in Kobe, Japan."
Author of six novels, including the brand new Stone Field, True Arrow,
Dr. Mori described how fiction and reality collide. "Often when
I write fiction, I find that the things I make up open doors for me and
allow me to write about truth in a different way ... Some people are like
fictional characters, even if they're real people in your lives ... If I
made them up, it wouldn't be as good." Dr. Mori's lecture was
sponsored by the Office of Multicultural Affairs.Return to Timely Coverage