Kirkus Reviews
2013-11-01In this debut memoir, a fiercely independent woman traces her life from Japan to America to Germany, chronicling vast cultural shifts and her own personal struggles. The author had a privileged but strict childhood in 1930s Japan; she had five other siblings, and as a result, she was never alone and never bored for long. Her life changed drastically, however, when World War II swept in and her family home was nearly destroyed in an air raid. Hunger and fear ran rampant across the country, and the landscape of her youth steadily eroded as the American occupation took hold. Later, as a young adult, she worked as a typist, dreaming of moving to America on scholarship. But after she received an anonymous letter pegging her as a communist, it destroyed both her plans and her employment. When she finally made it to the United States in 1953 to study sociology, she immediately took to her new life; stubborn and eager to learn, she decided against returning to Japan, much to the chagrin of her mother, and continued her education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. There, she fell hard for one of her professors, Hans Gerth, who was 17 years her senior, and married him amid much controversy. In 1971, Hans accepted a teaching position in his home country of Germany, where the couple found themselves at the center of political turmoil. Later, as a widow in a country where she barely spoke the language, Gerth found a new, invigorating career as a translator and interpreter. The author meticulously highlights the cultural nuances of each place she lived, and her endless ambition and passion are palpable--and by the end, so are her heartbreaks. However, the grammar is imperfect at times, which gives the book a choppy nature. Sometimes it gets bogged down listing the author's smallest memories, detracting from the flow of the engaging story. Other autobiographies focus heavily on flashy or dramatic events, but this one gives every event equal weight, valuing comprehensiveness above all. That said, readers interested in travel, varied cultural perspectives and the lives of tenacious women will eagerly follow Gerth's journey. A sprawling, compelling autobiography marred by occasionally uneven prose.