Minae Mizumura est une romancière qui remet en question les frontières conventionnelles de la littérature nationale. Bien qu'éduquée aux États-Unis et ayant initialement écrit en anglais, elle a choisi de composer en japonais, démontrant un profond engagement envers la langue et sa tradition littéraire. Ses romans sont acclamés pour être à la fois très lisibles et historiquement résonants, incorporant souvent des innovations formalistes telles que des formats d'impression uniques et des textes ou illustrations en anglais intercalés. Mizumura se consacre également à l'essai et à la critique littéraire, analysant notamment le déclin du japonais sous l'influence de l'anglais et plaidant pour la préservation du grand héritage littéraire moderne du Japon.
Minae Mizumura's An I-Novel is a semi-autobiographical work that takes place over the course of a single day in the 1980s. This formally daring novel radically broke with Japanese literary tradition and offers a luminous meditation on how a person becomes a writer.
First published in Japan in 2008 by Chikumashobo Ltd., Tokyo. entitled Nihongo ga horobiru toki: Eigo no seiki no naka de.
Now in paperback, this Osaragi Jiro Award-winning novel demystifies the notion of the selfless Japanese mother and the adult daughter honor-bound to care for her. Mitsuki Katsura, a Japanese woman in her mid-fifties, is a French-language instructor at a private university in Tokyo. Her husband, whom she met in Paris, is a professor at another private university. He is having an affair with a much younger woman. In addition to her husband's infidelity, Mitsuki must deal with her ailing eighty-something mother, a demanding, self-absorbed woman who is far from the image of the patient, self-sacrificing Japanese matriarch. Mitsuki finds herself guiltily dreaming of the day when her mother will finally pass on. While doing everything she can to ensure her mother's happiness, she grows weary of the responsibilities of being a doting daughter and worries she is sacrificing her chance to find fulfillment in her middle age. Inheritance from Mother not only offers insight into a complex and paradoxical culture, but is also a profound work about mothers and daughters, marriage, old age, and the resilience of women.