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allara 's review for:
Speak, Okinawa: A Memoir
by Elizabeth Miki Brina
Speak, Okinawa is Elizabeth Miki Brina's love letter to her heritage, to accepting who she is, to her mother, to her childhood, to herself. Brina’s mother was swept from her homeland of Okinawa, an island off the coast of Japan that she had never left, by a white American serviceman. Speaking no English, she settles with her new husband in America, following him as demanded by his work. Brina felt more connected as a child to her white father, who offered the chance of fitting in.
Vignettes move between the present day, Brina's childhood and coming of age, and wartorn Okinawa. Okinawa was ravaged during World War II, then left underneath US control before being returned to Japan. Brina traces back the roots of generational trauma; when writing about Okinawa, Brina speaks as a collective – the damage inflicted upon my mother, to my grandmother, was inflicted on me. It’s baked into our DNA, baked into who we are.
Brina gives her readers a gift in her painfully honest recognition of how she saw her mother throughout her early life. Growing up comes with its own set of demons to battle, especially when you’re mixed race growing up in a town that is overwhelmingly white. Yearning to fit in with her white classmates, Brina is isolated from her mother because of her stark “otherness”. There’s promise of hope in early childhood visits to Okinawa, a time before Brina lost the Japanese that she knew, widening the rift between her and her mother. Years and years would pass before Brina’s mother was able to return to her homeland – a place where she fit in without question, could seamlessly slip into conversations.
As an adult, Brina is startlingly aware of how she harmed her mother and the connection that could have been, the connection that never was. Brina doesn’t sugarcoat her childhood perspective, embarrassed that her mother couldn’t just be like everybody else and not yet able to recognize that the life that had brought her there wouldn’t allow it. “Eventually I realized that it is my responsibility to understand her, not her responsibility to make herself understood. But it took too long.”
This book broke me apart in a rare way. Not to get too sentimental, but it’s really a beautiful thing when words on a page can reach you so viscerally. Brina’s insightfulness and growth and way with words have resulted in a book that, to me, is a masterpiece.
Vignettes move between the present day, Brina's childhood and coming of age, and wartorn Okinawa. Okinawa was ravaged during World War II, then left underneath US control before being returned to Japan. Brina traces back the roots of generational trauma; when writing about Okinawa, Brina speaks as a collective – the damage inflicted upon my mother, to my grandmother, was inflicted on me. It’s baked into our DNA, baked into who we are.
Brina gives her readers a gift in her painfully honest recognition of how she saw her mother throughout her early life. Growing up comes with its own set of demons to battle, especially when you’re mixed race growing up in a town that is overwhelmingly white. Yearning to fit in with her white classmates, Brina is isolated from her mother because of her stark “otherness”. There’s promise of hope in early childhood visits to Okinawa, a time before Brina lost the Japanese that she knew, widening the rift between her and her mother. Years and years would pass before Brina’s mother was able to return to her homeland – a place where she fit in without question, could seamlessly slip into conversations.
As an adult, Brina is startlingly aware of how she harmed her mother and the connection that could have been, the connection that never was. Brina doesn’t sugarcoat her childhood perspective, embarrassed that her mother couldn’t just be like everybody else and not yet able to recognize that the life that had brought her there wouldn’t allow it. “Eventually I realized that it is my responsibility to understand her, not her responsibility to make herself understood. But it took too long.”
This book broke me apart in a rare way. Not to get too sentimental, but it’s really a beautiful thing when words on a page can reach you so viscerally. Brina’s insightfulness and growth and way with words have resulted in a book that, to me, is a masterpiece.