Mori has written two memoirs. The first one, published in 1995, is The Dream of Water. This memoir covers Mori's trip back to Japan, thirteen years after moving to the United States. As Mori travels back to her homeland, she also travels back through her memories, many of the same memories that triggered her writing the novel Shizuko's Daughter. Although the novel and memoir differ slightly from one another, the reader is given a fuller and even more dramatic glimpse into the psychological challenges that Mori has faced in coming to grips with her mother's suicide, her father's callous response to her, and her stepmother's immature attempts to keep Mori disconnected from her maternal relatives.

Mori's second memoir, Polite Lies: On Being a Woman Caught between Cultures (1997), includes twelve essays that deal with Mori's observations of the role of women as...