Child of Fortune By conventional Japanese standards Koko Mizuno is an abysmalfailure as woman wife and mother and she couldn t care less She has succeeded in remaining true to herself in a stubborn struggle against
By conventional Japanese standards, Koko Mizuno is an abysmalfailure as woman, wife, and mother and she couldn t care less She has succeeded in remaining true to herself in a stubborn struggle against powerful conformist pressures Yet her resistance is largely passive.Self absorbed, indecisive, she makes her own uncharted way through life,letting her husband, lovers, evBy conventional Japanese standards, Koko Mizuno is an abysmalfailure as woman, wife, and mother and she couldn t care less She has succeeded in remaining true to herself in a stubborn struggle against powerful conformist pressures Yet her resistance is largely passive.Self absorbed, indecisive, she makes her own uncharted way through life,letting her husband, lovers, even her only daughter, gradually slip away.Signs that she is pregnant after a casual affair rouse her to make decisions Then a deeply ironic turn of events thrusts her into the cold light of a reluctant self knowledge Through layer upon layer of dreams,memories, defenses, and delusions, she emerges finally to take a conscious step toward the independence she cannot yet define, certain only that she herself has changed.In Child of Fortune, Yuko Tsushima has brought to life a woman whose psychological complexity reflects the meeting of Japanese fiction and women s changing consciousness The depths of inner conflict are illuminated here by radiant imagery, wry humor, and a sharp clarity of vision.While drawing on the I novel tradition that has dominated modern Japanese literature, the author integrates the autobiographical elements into a fully realized fictional work of penetrating social insight.The novel received the 1978 Women s Literature Prize, one of many awards that have spotlighted Yuko Tsushima as a writer of exceptional gifts.
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Child of Fortune Best Read || [Yūko Tsushima Geraldine Harcourt]
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Yūko Tsushima Geraldine Harcourt
Y ko Tsushima is the pen name of Satoko Tsushima, a contemporary Japanese fiction writer, essayist and critic She is the daughter of famed novelist Osamu Dazai, who died when she was one year old She is considered one of the most important Japanese writers of her generation The New York Times.She has won many major literary prizes, including the Kawabata for The Silent Traders, one of the stories in The Shooting Gallery, and the Tanizaki for Mountain of Fire Her early fiction, from which The Shooting Gallery is drawn, was largely based on her experience as a single mother.Her multilayered narrative techniques have increasingly taken inspiration from the Ainu oral epics yukar and the tales of premodern Japan When invited to teach Japanese literature to graduate students in Paris, she taught the yukar, and her seminar led to the publication of Tombent, tombent les gouttes d argent Chants du peuple a nou 1996 , the first French edition of the epic poems.Tsushima is active in networks such as the Japan India Writers Caravans and dialogues with Korean and Chinese writers Recent novels have been set in Taiwan during Japanese colonial rule, among the Kyrgyz, in medieval Nara, and in post 3 11 Tokyo Her work has been translated into a dozen languages.