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Elizabeth'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. There, Elizabeth grew up with the trappings of a typical American childhood and adolescence. Yet even though she felt almost no connection to her mother's distant home, she also felt out of place among her peers.
Decades later, Elizabeth comes to recognize the shame and self-loathing that haunt both her and her mother, and 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. Clear-eyed and profoundly humane, Speak, Okinawa is a startling accomplishment—a heartfelt exploration of identity, inheritance, forgiveness, and what it means to be an American.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
February 23, 2021 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9780593348932
- File size: 244444 KB
- Duration: 08:29:15
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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Narrator Sachi Lovatt's measured, almost detached, tone suits author Elizabeth Miki Brina's candid memoir of her challenges with racial identity. Brina, the daughter of a war bride from Okinawa and an American veteran of the Vietnam War, shares her intimate and emotional story. Lovatt's calm tone and relaxed pace help listeners settle into the narrative's complexities as she conveys incidents of intergenerational trauma, promiscuity, alcohol abuse, racial prejudice, and difficult parent/adult child relationships. Lovatt's facility with Japanese words and her thoughtful presentations of Brina, her Japanese-born mother, and her American-born father add authenticity and nuance. Lovatt's impressive narration helps listeners connect with Brina's pain and root for her as she navigates her challenging family landscape and finds her place in the world. M.J. © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine -
November 16, 2020
Brina captivates in her stunning and intimate debut memoir. Brina’s mother, born and raised in post-WWII Okinawa, where the feuding forces of China, Japan, and the U.S. left the local population impoverished, married Brina’s father, a white American soldier from a wealthy family, in 1974, only to find herself a lonely fish out of water after they moved to suburban Fairport, N.Y. As an American child in a largely white community in the ’80s, Elizabeth found her mother’s foreign culture embarrassing and acted out as a result. (She writes, for instance, of giving her mother a paper-cutout heart with “I love you” written in Japanese for Christmas, and later tearing it to shreds: “When my mother sees what I have done, she covers her face with her hands and weeps.”) On a trip to Okinawa with her parents after her own broken engagement, she had an epiphany, realizing that her parents’ love is genuine but fraught with an unsettling power dynamic, evidenced by the fact that, on the trip, her father played tour guide, showing his naive “country gal” the rest of her own nation. This nuanced tale goes both wide and deep, and is as moving as it is ambitious. Memoir lovers will be enthralled.
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