Bibliophobia: A Memoir

For book critic and essayist Chihaya (The Ferrante Letters), bookish obsessions can turn into emotional, sometimes painful, literary encounters that change readers’ lives. Books, she asserts, are reflections of the pleasures, prejudices, anxieties, struggles, and desires that make people utterly, unbearably human. Her memoir shows that for her, living through and in books meant experiencing her cultural dislocation as a Japanese American in a white Cleveland suburb. For example, when Chihaya read Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and saw how Morrison portrayed racial relations, she was able to relate that narrative to reach the depths of how she herself felt about being a person of color in a predominantly white neighborhood. The experience made Chihaya wonder whether she—and others—could rewrite narratives in restorative ways. This literary work, a combination of memoir and criticism, spotlights Chihaya’s journey of highs and lows as she sought that answer for herself.