2013-2014 Go Big Read: A Tale for the Time Being : About the Book

Skeletons in the closet? Halving the Bones delivers a surprising twist to this tale. The film tells the story of the half-Japanese filmmaker, Ruth, who has inherited a can of bones that she keeps on a shelf in her closet. The bones are half of the remains of her dead Japanese grandmother-the rest are buried in a cemetery in Tokyo. In a narrative and visual web of family lies and stories, home movies and documentary footage, Halving the Bones traces one hundred years of Ruth's maternal family history, from Japan, to Hawaii, to a suburb in Connecticut.