Recensori in anteprimaJuliet Winters Carpenter

"...we should take notice and read. This is a compelling and haunting narrative tracking skillfully back and forth through histories, between mothers, sisters, daughters and wives eternally damaged by being born into a mad world and its fairy-tale curse: ‘unfortunately, it’s a girl’" —Judith Adams, Artistic Director of Whitestone Arts With a deeply-imbedded indebtedness to their father Morimasa Morimoto, a self-made man in post-war Japan, two sisters struggle to uphold a family legacy. Sakiko moves to the fantastically free United States. Fragile and unsure in 1960s San Francisco, she clings to her brazen artist husband for stability. Hiroko, headstrong and irreverent, uses her father’s money to move to New York, promising to become a famous artist. Intolerant of weakness in others, she crumbles in the face of her own shortcomings. From catty carpooling moms to manipulative stoners, abortions to adultery, White Elephant is a vivid book from a seasoned artist turned writer. Mako Idemitsu, known for her provocative video art and daughter of Rockefeller-esque petroleum executive Sazo Idemitsu, reconfigures her own family discord to reflect on the binds of being female in this gorgeous English translation.

This is an authorized reprint of a classic work on the Japanese perception of failure, including extensive discussions of failed heroes in Japanese history, especially the kamikaze pilots of World War II. Numerous typographical errors have been corrected (and hopefully no new ones added!), but other than that there is no new material from the original trade paperback edition, which has been out of print for far too long. It does, however, exclude the photographs, Outline Chronology, and glossary that were included in the original hardcover edition, as essentially all of that information is available online.