Stories of My Life

by Katherine Paterson

First published 2014

Amazon

4.5(56)

Katherine Paterson gathers autobiographical essays about her childhood in China, wartime displacement, education in the United States, missionary work in postwar Japan, marriage, family life and the gradual development of her career as a children’s author. Family photographs, letters and recollections connect these experiences with the people, places and emotional questions that later entered her fiction.

This is a memoir and collection of personal essays rather than a novel. It is particularly useful for understanding how the Second Sino-Japanese War, repeated migration and Paterson’s years in reconstructing Japan shaped her sense of home, cultural difference, faith and childhood vulnerability.