"Yarn: Remembering the Way Home"

I read Kyoko Mori's memoir, "The Dream of Water," and her book of essays, "Polite Lies," some years ago. Mori has also published three novels; I have not read those. I have just finished reading her new memoir, "Yarn: Remembering the Way Home" (GemmaMedia, 2010). In this book, Mori recapitulates and continues the story of her mother's suicide in Japan, her own moving to the United States for college and eventually becoming a professor of English, and her unusual marriage that is amicable but wobbly, and eventually ends in divorce. While she lives and teaches in the smallish town of Green Bay, Wisconsin, she feels like an outsider, yet gradually finds connections through meeting fellow knitters, weavers, and spinners. Her deep engagement with learning about and practicing these crafts with ever-increasing skill and art (and no small investment of time and money in materials, classes, a studio, and more) provides her with a community, as well as a way of making sense of her life. She remembers her late mother's sewing, and feels connected to her through her own creations of sweaters, mittens, shawls, and more. Although her mother's depression and death, and her stepmother's cruelty, cast a long, deep shadow continuing into Mori's adult life, she is eventually able through sheer will to make a productive and even happy life for herself. What stands out to me in this memoir is, first, the constant tension between Mori's need for connection and her need for solitude, and, second, how hard she has had to work to achieve a reasonable portion of peace and happiness. I don't personally knit or sew or weave, but in this book, Mori makes me understand how those arts can be creative, satisfying, and even a lifeline at times.