Well, A Peach Has A

I've Lived My Life Again Just Telling It To You.

Yet Somehow The Thing That Startled Me Most, After A Week Or Two Had Passed, Was That I Had In Fact Survived.

As An American Man Of The 1990s Writing About A Japanese Woman Of The 1930s, I Needed To Cross Three Cultural Divides - Man To Woman, American To Japanese, And Present To Past.

For A Flicker Of A Moment I Imagined A World Completely Different From The One I'd Always Known, A World In Which I Was Treated With Fairness, Even Kindness-- A World In Which Fathers Didn't Sell Their Daughters.

My Mother Once Told Me I Was Like Water. Water Can Carve Its Way Even Through Stone. And When Trapped, Water Makes A New Path.