Praise for The Love Ceiling
“The Love Ceiling is wonderful, touching, funny. Jean Davies Okimoto writes with literary perfect pitch.”
– Christiane Northrup, MD
Author of The Secret Pleasures of Menopause; Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom; and Mother-Daughter Wisdom
“The Love Ceiling is a lovely book, full of wisdom and compassion. With keen insight, the author examines the problems of achieving fulfillment as both a woman and an artist in modern society, as viewed through the eyes of recognizably true-to-life characters.”
– Barbara G. Walker
Author of The Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, The Woman’s Dictionary of Symbols and Sacred Objects, and The Crone
“rich with life experiences...rendered with compassion and insight.”
– Nancy Livingstone
US Review of Books
“The Love Ceiling, by Jean Davies Okimoto, is a fine painting of words by a true artist. She describes, in beautiful painterly scenes, three generations of one family’s women. These capable, strong, creative women go about their lives interacting with family, lovers, and friends. Love with pain, cruelty, anger, hate, anguish, and compassion color their lives. This is a book so compelling that once you begin you cannot put it down.”
– Chizuko Judy Sugita de Queiroz
Artist and author of Camp Days: 1942-1945
“...an intriguing, absorbing, and unusual novel.”
– Mary Gergen
The Positive Aging Newsletter
“As Anne Kuroda Duppstaad crashes against the ‘love ceiling’ and realizes that the demons of the past she struggles to ‘disarm’ are really inside herself, she journeys from bitterness to acceptance, finally giving herself permission to create art. For a Western woman, this is a difficult enough journey. For a woman raised with Japanese values of restraint and sacrifice, the victory is even more hard won. Any woman who has ever wrestled with a difficult father will find inspiration and solace in these lucid pages.”
– Leza Lowitz
Former Tokyo correspondent for Art in America, author of Green Tea to Go: Stories from Tokyo, and editor of Other Side River/A Long Rainy Season: Contemporary Japanese Women’s Poetry
“In this courageous journey, Okimoto gives us a model for any woman yearning to claim her truth, to be seen for who she is in her deepest heart. I was inspired by The Love Ceiling and recommend it for any woman seeking greater self-expression."
– Lisa Dale Norton
Author of Hawk Flies Above: Journey to the Heart of the Sandhills, and Shimmering Images: A Handy Little Guide to Writing Memoir