Talking to High Monks in the Snow - by Lydia Minatoya (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Winner of the 1991 PEN/Jerard Fund Award, Talking to High Monks in the Snow captures the passion and intensity of an Asian-American woman's search for cultural identity.

From the Back Cover

In a voice at once penetrating and humorous, vulnerable and wise, Lydia Minatoya takes us on an evocative exploration of cultural identity that starts with her childhood of ethnic isolation in upstate New York in the fifties, as she listens to her parents' astonishing and affecting tales of her Japanese heritage. These stories of the silk-and-shadow world of a samurai family, of immigration and internment, and of spiritual transcendence later propel her outward on her own geographic and emotional journey--from patrician New England to Japan, China, and Nepal--in a search to understand her Asian-ness and its place in a complex American identity.

Review Quotes

"Memorable and intense....adds a new and important voice to the diverse chorus of American experience.""--San Francisco Chronicle"