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A review by mitskacir
Speak, Okinawa: A Memoir by Elizabeth Miki Brina
4.0
What I loved most about this book was the really complex way Brina characterized her parents and herself. Although she often cast judgment on her parents, she described many different aspects of their characters, complicating how I felt about them. In one chapter, she would describe her father's extreme overbearing parenting in a way that made me cringe, and in the next describe his actions that truly showed his unconditional love and acceptance of her. Her mother was portrayed overall more sympathetically, but Brina did not shy away from describing her own deeply cruel and indifferent perceptions of her mother that she had growing up. Sometimes I hated Brina, and sometimes I fully understood her.
Although I didn't really enjoy [b:Racial Melancholia, Racial Dissociation: On the Social and Psychic Lives of Asian Americans|39103327|Racial Melancholia, Racial Dissociation On the Social and Psychic Lives of Asian Americans|David L. Eng|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1547004263l/39103327._SY75_.jpg|60695051], a very dense psychoanalytical read, I really connected some of the things I read there with Brina's relationship with her Okinawan mother - or, as Racial Melancholia would say, her "bad", racialized mother. For this alone, I feel like was worth it for me to read Racial Melancholia, and I was very interested in how Brina's experience could have been a case study for it. Both these books have also made me reflect more on my relationship with my Japanese family and the way that my perceptions may be influenced by their racialization. I really appreciated Brina's unflinching reflections on her own actions toward her mother and on her positionally within her mixed race family.
Although I didn't really enjoy [b:Racial Melancholia, Racial Dissociation: On the Social and Psychic Lives of Asian Americans|39103327|Racial Melancholia, Racial Dissociation On the Social and Psychic Lives of Asian Americans|David L. Eng|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1547004263l/39103327._SY75_.jpg|60695051], a very dense psychoanalytical read, I really connected some of the things I read there with Brina's relationship with her Okinawan mother - or, as Racial Melancholia would say, her "bad", racialized mother. For this alone, I feel like was worth it for me to read Racial Melancholia, and I was very interested in how Brina's experience could have been a case study for it. Both these books have also made me reflect more on my relationship with my Japanese family and the way that my perceptions may be influenced by their racialization. I really appreciated Brina's unflinching reflections on her own actions toward her mother and on her positionally within her mixed race family.