One Hundred and One Ways

If Kiki Takehashi's life is dramatically different from that of her reserved Japanese-American mother, it is light-years away from that of her grandmother, whom she knows only through old family stories. Kiki has recently become engaged to Eric, a handsome, successful New York City lawyer. But at the same time she is haunted--quite literally--by the memory of her friend Phillip, killed the previous year in a mountaineering accident.

Kiki has never met her grandmother Yukiko, for whom she is named. Still, thoroughly American though she is, she feels a secret kinship with her. Kiki is swept up by the story of this strong, proud, passionate woman who, against all odds, in a time and place far different from her own, was sold by her impoverished family, became a famous geisha, and found the love that has so far eluded the rest of the Takehashi women.

Lyrical, haunting, and stunningly evocative, One Hundred and One Ways introduces a powerful and exciting new voice in contemporary fiction.

"I have spent most of my life in New Jersey, but the blood of a geisha courses through me yet."

If Kiki Takehashi's life is dramatically different from that of her reserved Japanese-American mother, it is light-years away from that of her grandmother, whom she knows only through old family stories. Kiki has recently become engaged to Eric, a handsome, successful New York City lawyer. But at the same time she is haunted—quite literally—by the memory of her friend Phillip, killed the previous year in a mountaineering accident.

Kiki has never met her grandmother Yukiko, for whom she is named. Still, thoroughly American though she is, she feels a secret kinship with her. Kiki is swept up by the story of this strong, proud, passionate woman who, against all odds, in a time and place far different from her own, was sold by her impoverished family, became a famous geisha, and found the love that has so far eluded the rest of the Takehashi women.

Lyrical, haunting, and stunningly evocative, One Hundred and One Ways introduces a powerful and exciting new voice in contemporary fiction.

Greensboro News & Record

An absorbing tale of three generations of women seeking to make peace with the past and form loving relationships ... Yoshikawa is a graceful and lyrical writer ... a promising new literary voice.

Mako Yoshikawa has studied at Columbia University and Oxford. She has been the Vera M. Schuyler Fellow of Creative Writing at the Bunting Institute at Harvard University, and she is a doctoral candidate in English literature at the University of Michigan.  Her great-grandmother was a geisha.