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4.24 AVERAGE
4.24 AVERAGE
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.
Elizabeth Miki Brina’s mother was working as a nightclub hostess on U.S.-occupied Okinawa when she met the American soldier who would become her husband. The language barrier and power imbalance that defined their early relationship followed them to the predominantly white, upstate New York suburb where they moved to raise their only daughter. Decades later, the author comes to recognize the shame and self-loathing that haunt both her and her mother, and she attempts a form of reconciliation, not only to come to terms with the embattled dynamics of her family but also to reckon with the injustices that reverberate throughout the history of Okinawa and its people.