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A review by kyr_6592
Speak, Okinawa: A Memoir by Elizabeth Miki Brina
4.5
“Yet these memories are impossible to forget, regardless of whether we actually lived through them. I believe they stay in our bodies. As sickness, as addiction, as poor posture or a tendency toward apology, as a deepened capacity for sadness or anger. As determination to survive, a relentless tempered optimism. I believe they are inherited, passed on to us like brown eyes or the shape of a nose.”
“Eventually I realized that the world is certainly big enough for her English, for all Englishes, for all the languages and dialects, each one another history, another journey, another map by which we discover ourselves. Eventually I realized that it is my responsibility to understand her, not her responsibility to make herself understood. But it took too long.”
“Sometimes, in real life, change can happen in an instant. This change, this epiphany of connection, that her trauma is my trauma, that our pain comes from the same source—this change is permanent. But sometimes, at first, it doesn’t last. It goes away and comes back. Then goes away and comes back.”
“I am trying to tell her now that her life is important enough to remember.”
“Maybe the gravitation is nurtured, but maybe it is also hardwired. You look like me, you are family, you will keep me safe, you are home.”
“Sometimes I let the water go stale, let the roots go dry. Sometimes I forget to rub their leaves with my fingertips and wipe the dust off with a cloth. Some of the stalks turn yellow and soft, but new stalks grow, and I cut them off and place them in jars.”
“Maybe that’s not true anymore. Maybe not now, after forty years. But for my mother, time is condensed. For my mother, forty years ago is the distance between two ends of a fold.”
“Her apologies used to bother me. My apologies used to bother me. I used to equate apology with weakness, with lack of importance. I used to feel bad for feeling bad for taking up too much space. Now I am grateful. So much wrong happens in the world, and there is never enough apology.”
“Eventually I realized that the world is certainly big enough for her English, for all Englishes, for all the languages and dialects, each one another history, another journey, another map by which we discover ourselves. Eventually I realized that it is my responsibility to understand her, not her responsibility to make herself understood. But it took too long.”
“Sometimes, in real life, change can happen in an instant. This change, this epiphany of connection, that her trauma is my trauma, that our pain comes from the same source—this change is permanent. But sometimes, at first, it doesn’t last. It goes away and comes back. Then goes away and comes back.”
“I am trying to tell her now that her life is important enough to remember.”
“Maybe the gravitation is nurtured, but maybe it is also hardwired. You look like me, you are family, you will keep me safe, you are home.”
“Sometimes I let the water go stale, let the roots go dry. Sometimes I forget to rub their leaves with my fingertips and wipe the dust off with a cloth. Some of the stalks turn yellow and soft, but new stalks grow, and I cut them off and place them in jars.”
“Maybe that’s not true anymore. Maybe not now, after forty years. But for my mother, time is condensed. For my mother, forty years ago is the distance between two ends of a fold.”
“Her apologies used to bother me. My apologies used to bother me. I used to equate apology with weakness, with lack of importance. I used to feel bad for feeling bad for taking up too much space. Now I am grateful. So much wrong happens in the world, and there is never enough apology.”