Minae Mizumura è una romanziera che sfida i confini convenzionali della letteratura nazionale. Sebbene educata negli Stati Uniti e inizialmente scrivendo in inglese, scelse di comporre in giapponese, dimostrando un profondo impegno per la lingua e la sua tradizione letteraria. I suoi romanzi sono acclamati per essere sia molto leggibili che storicamente risonanti, incorporando spesso innovazioni formaliste come formati di stampa unici e testi o illustrazioni in inglese intercalati. Mizumura si dedica anche al saggio e alla critica letteraria, analizzando in particolare il declino del giapponese sotto l'influenza dell'inglese e sostenendo la conservazione della grande eredità letteraria moderna del Giappone.
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.