In the Province of the Gods

by Kenny Fries

Overview

Kenny Fries embarks on a journey of profound self-discovery as a disabled foreigner in Japan, a society historically hostile to difference. As he visits gardens, experiences Noh and butoh, and meets artists and scholars, he also discovers disabled gods, one-eyed samurai, blind chanting priests, and A-bomb survivors. When he is diagnosed as HIV positive, all his assumptions about Japan, the body, and mortality are shaken, and he must find a way to reenter life on new terms.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780299314248
Publisher:	University of Wisconsin Press
Publication date:	12/23/2021
Series:	Living Out: Gay and Lesbian Autobiography Series
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	216
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Kenny Fries is the author of Body, Remember: A Memoir and The History of My Shoes and the Evolution of Darwin's Theory. He is the editor of Staring Back: The Disability Experience from the Inside Out. He teaches in the MFA in Creative Writing Program at Goddard College and is the recipient of a prestigious Creative Capital grant.

Table of Contents

Prologue: In the Province of the Gods
 
I. Floating
One: Genkan
Two: Fortune
Three: Barrier Free
Four: Foreign Affairs
Five: Mono no Aware
Six: Physical Facts
Seven: A Mountain of Skulls and Candlelit Graves
Eight: An Infected Throat and a Healing Tree
Nine: Borrowing the Hills
 
II. Away
One: Before
Two: After
 
III. World
One: Survivals
Two: A Pair of One-Winged Birds
Three: History Being Created, or What the Leech Child Says
Four: Rare and Uncommon Beings
Five: Bubbling Water
Six: My Japan
Seven: Before and After
Eight: Positive Effects
Nine: New Stories in an Ancient Land
 
Epilogue: Procession
 
Acknowledgments
Suggested Readings  

Editorial Reviews

"Kenny Fries writes out of the pure hot emergency of a mortal being trying to keep himself alive. So much is at stake here—health, affection, culture, trauma, language—but its greatest surprise is what thrives in the midst of suffering. A beautiful book."—Paul Lisicky, author of The Narrow Door


"Like the best memoirs, it reminds us of the genre's twinned truths: first, that the surest way to discover the self is to look out at the world, and second, that the best way to teach others about something is to tell them not 'what it is,' but what it means to you. Fries's deft, questioning prose is as full of compassion as curiosity, and his revelations about himself are no less compelling than what he learns about Japan."—Dale Peck, author of Visions and Revisions: Coming of Age in the Age of AIDS


"Deeply moving and exquisitely written about many things—cultural and physical difference, sexuality, love, loss, mortality, and the ephemeral nature of beauty and art—and a love letter to Japan."—Mira Bartók, author of The Memory Palace


“Elegant and probing, In the Province of the Gods reads like the log of an early adventurer charting a newly discovered land. History, sexual politics, disability, and wooden fortune sticks are blended into an unexpected, tightly written exploration of Japanese culture. Fries may be the guy on the journey, but we're the ones making the discoveries.”—Susan R. Nussbaum, author of Good Kings, Bad Kings


"In this subtle page turner, Fries helps reinvent the travel-as-pilgrimage narrative. He neither exoticizes nor shies away from the potential pitfalls of a western mind traveling abroad; instead he demonstrates how, through an all too rare open heart and a true poet's eye, bridges can be built, and understanding deepened, one sincere action at a time."—Marie Mutsuki Mockett, author of Where the Dead Pause, and the Japanese Say Goodbye

From the Publisher

2017-07-03
The memoir of a writer who traveled to Japan and found a new perspective on himself.Poet and memoirist Fries (Creative Writing/Goddard Coll.; The History of My Shoes and the Evolution of Darwin's Theory, 2007, etc.) was on the verge of a traumatic romantic split when he first traveled to Japan to research a book about the country's approach to disability. His partner had urged him to pursue the grant, but after their separation, he was alone in a foreign country, where his lifelong disability that hinders his mobility would add to the challenge. He even has trouble removing his shoes, which Japanese decorum demands. Fries documents how he came to terms with the country—as a foreigner, as a disabled person, and as a gay man. Less than halfway through the narrative, he has made friends, found romantic interests, and made himself at home. "Why am I so comfortable here?" he asks. "Why does Tokyo seem, in so many ways, after such a short time, home?" Throughout the book, the author asks himself frequent questions; when his grant expired and he had to return to the U.S., he had a new, more disturbing set of them. He had fallen ill, received a diagnosis that suggested HIV, and was beginning to see his life in a whole new light. "I am filled with questions," he writes. "What survives? Who survives? How long will I survive?" Fries eventually returned to Japan on a new grant, found a healer and a lover, and continued his research, but he also discovered that his focus had shifted. "The book about disability in Japan is the book I came to write," he writes. "Now, with all that has changed, it seems that there is another, more urgent book to write, a book where I am more subject than researcher. Is there a connection between the two?" This slim, readable memoir, while occasionally overly inward-facing, answers that question as one project morphs into another.

Kirkus Reviews