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4.24 AVERAGE
4.24 AVERAGE
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
medium-paced
This is such a wonderful memoir. It tells Elizabeth Miki Brina’s personal story, her life growing up in the United States as a mixed race white and Okinawan woman as well as her mother’s life story marrying a American and moving to the United States. Throughout the memoir we also hear about the story of the Okinawan people as a whole, their colonization from Japan and the American military base that they have been protesting (and still are.)
Because her mother is Okinawan and her father is a veterinarian is PTSD I really got a sense of how the systems of power and colonization only cause harm to everyone involved.
Brina writes so honestly about herself and her faults and I really admire that. She wrote so truthfully about her exeroience of being mixed race and waning to be white as a child which I really related to. Through writing about this I saw such a relatable explanation of internalized racism and I loved hearing about how she did and is working to undo this though a connection to her mother and their shared history.
The end of this book made me tear up. I didn’t know that much about Okinawa before reading this book but having read it my heart is with the people of Okinawa and their struggle for freedom.
Free Okinawa.
informative
reflective
medium-paced
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
tense
This books takes you through several lifetimes of feelings. It is often balancing a hard reality of a often ignored people with the all too familiar experiences of a woman most women can relate to.
The author does an amazing job of putting you in her shoes thought the book and putting you in an empathic space when discussing the people of Okinawa.
The author does an amazing job of putting you in her shoes thought the book and putting you in an empathic space when discussing the people of Okinawa.
emotional
informative
reflective
medium-paced
Well crafted and with a distinct POV, this memoir was appreciated by me, a person who does not read memoirs. I like reading memoirs by people who still love their families. Brina is honest about her parents’ flaws (and her own) but she is also unflinching in her love of them.
adventurous
challenging
dark
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
tense
slow-paced
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Such a beautiful, candid, painful memoir (and incredibly lovely audiobook). Brina writes so honestly and bravely about her feelings about her mother, and she shows her father as the loving and challenging person he is. The history of Okinawa shocked me, and though it sometimes took me a minute to swing between the history and her personal memoir, I learned so much.