Talking to High Monks in the Snow

– an Asian American Odyssey –

“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.”