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kapbanana 's review for:
Speak, Okinawa: A Memoir
by Elizabeth Miki Brina
challenging
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
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.
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.