419 reviews for:

Speak, Okinawa: A Memoir

Elizabeth Miki Brina

4.24 AVERAGE

esoken's review

4.75

emotional informative reflective medium-paced

elchiang78's review

3.5

challenging emotional informative reflective sad medium-paced

zhzhang's review against another edition

5.0

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Very candid, thus very touching.

the_caitlin's review

5.0

challenging emotional informative reflective sad slow-paced

irlbanana's review

2.0

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the only reason i gave this memoir two stars instead of one is because of the ending.

for 75% of the book, brina is insufferable. maybe i’m not being empathetic enough, but as the american daughter of asian immigrants myself, it’s not easy to excuse her internalized racism + misogyny, selfishness, immaturity, and lack of responsibility. i’m glad to see that she has begun to right her wrongs though, and i hope she and her family can heal.

putting her personality aside, the writing style is not very good imo either. i think the short, choppy sentences were pretentious and the non-linear narrative was confusing… and also pretentious, now that i think about it

t2002's review

5.0

emotional inspiring reflective medium-paced

kapbanana's review against another edition

3.25

challenging emotional reflective medium-paced

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Speak, Okinawa is an honest, and oftentimes, painful memoir about identity, family, and love. I found this book challenging - not because Brina uses dense prose or obfuscates her meaning (in fact, I really enjoyed her writing) - but because of her unfiltered look at her own life and emotions/actions, especially when she was younger. By being honest, Brina comes across almost as the villain; Internalized racism plays a central role throughout the book. But that refusal to look away from the awful, those emotions we like to keep hidden and secret, is what makes this memoir so powerful. It has left me with a lot to think about and reflect on. Because, part of why I struggled with this memoir was because Brina can be hard to sympathize with at times. While I didn't enjoy this book as much as similar difficult/challenging memoirs, I still found it a very important and worthwhile read. 

My only really critique concerns the organization. It jumped around chronologically and thematically, without any clear connecting point. In that way, it read more as a collection of essays instead of a whole memoir.

combepherre's review against another edition

4.25

emotional hopeful informative reflective sad medium-paced

pagesandtealeavess's review against another edition

4.0

adventurous challenging emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

kempfme's review

3.0

emotional informative inspiring medium-paced