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.
Interpretation
The quote reflects the complexity of understanding different cultural perspectives across time and gender.
Arthur Golden's quote highlights the challenges and intricacies involved in bridging cultural gaps when creating narratives that involve diverse identities. It emphasizes how an author must navigate not only gender differences but also national and temporal divides, requiring a deep understanding of the intricate layers that define human experiences across cultures.
In practice
In a discussion about cross-cultural literature, one might say, 'As Arthur Golden noted, bridging cultural divides requires deep understanding.'
We all know that a winter scene, though it may be covered over one day, with even the trees dressed in shawls of snow, will be unrecognizable the following spring. Yet I never imagined such a thing could occur within our very selves.
An en is a karmic bond lasting a lifetime. Nowadays many people seem to believe their lives are entirely a matter of choice; but in my day we viewed ourselves as pieces of clay that forever show the fingerprints of everyone who has touched them.
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.
The heart dies a slow death, shedding each hope like leaves until one day there are none. No hopes. Nothing remains.
He was like a song I'd heard once in fragments but had been singing in my mind ever since.
I don't think any of us can speak frankly about pain until we are no longer enduring it.
Most people would trade everything they know, everyone they know- they'd trade it all to know they've been seen, and acknowledged, that they might even be remembered. We all know we die. We all know the world is too big for us to be significant. So all we have is the hope of being seen, or heard, even for a moment.
I put my head out of my window and see how much the wind’s knife wants to slice it off. On this unseen guillotine, I’ve placed the eyeless head of all my desires.
A general dissolution of principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy. While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but when once they lose their virtue then will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader.
Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.
There are no experts in the company of Jesus. We are all beginners, necessarily followers, because we don’t know where we are going.
In this we see the wondrous virtue of the Lord: that the power dwelling in His body should communicate to perishable things the efficacy to heal, and that the divine activity should issue forth even from the hem of His garment. For God is not perceptible by the senses, to be enclosed within a body. The assumption of a body did not limit the nature of His power; but for our redemption His power took upon it the frailty of our body.
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