Speak, Okinawa : a memoir
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Speak, Okinawa : a memoir
Granta Books, 2021
- : hbk
Available at 3 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
  China
  Thailand
  United Kingdom
  Germany
  Switzerland
  France
  Belgium
  Netherlands
  Sweden
  Norway
  United States of America
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Here's a story. On the U.S.-occupied island of Okinawa, an American soldier falls in love with a beautiful Japanese woman. He saves her from a life of grinding poverty. They settle in the States, to live out the suburban American Dream with their child.
Here's another version. The U.S. military has occupied Okinawa since World War Two, after slaughtering a third of the island's population; the beautiful Japanese woman lives in poverty and marries the soldier as a way to escape.
Here's a third version. A little girl grows up with a mother who can't pronounce her name. She meets blood relatives with whom she cannot communicate. She clings to a sense of whiteness that white peers will not let her claim. She is born as the convergence of these conflicting stories and as she grows up she must reclaim her own narrative.
Speak, Okinawa is Elizabeth Miki Brina's courageous and heart-breaking testament to the struggle for belonging. It is a story about the immigrant experience; it is a story about how it feels to grow up biracial; it is a story about the island of Okinawa, from its first inhabitants to its colonisation by Japan and the United States. But above all, it is a story about reckoning with your history, and the links that tie you to your heritage and give you a sense of home within yourself.
by "Nielsen BookData"