Author: Elizabeth Miki Brina
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0525657355
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 304
Book Description
A “hauntingly beautiful memoir about family and identity” (NPR) and a young woman's journey to understanding her complicated parents—her mother an Okinawan war bride, her father a Vietnam veteran—and her own, fraught cultural heritage. 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.
Speak, Okinawa
Author: Elizabeth Miki Brina
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0525657355
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 304
Book Description
A “hauntingly beautiful memoir about family and identity” (NPR) and a young woman's journey to understanding her complicated parents—her mother an Okinawan war bride, her father a Vietnam veteran—and her own, fraught cultural heritage. 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.
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0525657355
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 304
Book Description
A “hauntingly beautiful memoir about family and identity” (NPR) and a young woman's journey to understanding her complicated parents—her mother an Okinawan war bride, her father a Vietnam veteran—and her own, fraught cultural heritage. 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.
Picnic In the Ruins
Author: Todd Robert Petersen
Publisher: Catapult
ISBN: 1640093230
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 266
Book Description
Named Best Mystery Thriller in the 2021 New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards "Part mystery; part quirky, darkly funny, mayhem-filled thriller; and part meditation on what it means to 'own' land, artifacts, and the narrative of history in the West . . . A fast-paced, highly entertaining hybrid of Tony Hillerman and Edward Abbey." --Kirkus Reviews Anthropologist Sophia Shepard is researching the impact of tourism on cultural sites in a remote national monument on the Utah-Arizona border when she crosses paths with two small-time criminals. The Ashdown brothers were hired to steal maps from a "collector" of Native American artifacts, but their ineptitude has alerted the local sheriff to their presence. Their employer, a former lobbyist seeking lucrative monument land that may soon be open to energy exploration, sends a fixer to clean up their mess. Suddenly, Sophia must put her theories to the test in the real world, and the stakes are higher than she could have ever imagined. What begins as a madcap caper across the RV-strewn vacation lands of southern Utah becomes a meditation on mythology, authenticity, the ethics of preservation, and one nagging question: Who owns the past?
Publisher: Catapult
ISBN: 1640093230
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 266
Book Description
Named Best Mystery Thriller in the 2021 New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards "Part mystery; part quirky, darkly funny, mayhem-filled thriller; and part meditation on what it means to 'own' land, artifacts, and the narrative of history in the West . . . A fast-paced, highly entertaining hybrid of Tony Hillerman and Edward Abbey." --Kirkus Reviews Anthropologist Sophia Shepard is researching the impact of tourism on cultural sites in a remote national monument on the Utah-Arizona border when she crosses paths with two small-time criminals. The Ashdown brothers were hired to steal maps from a "collector" of Native American artifacts, but their ineptitude has alerted the local sheriff to their presence. Their employer, a former lobbyist seeking lucrative monument land that may soon be open to energy exploration, sends a fixer to clean up their mess. Suddenly, Sophia must put her theories to the test in the real world, and the stakes are higher than she could have ever imagined. What begins as a madcap caper across the RV-strewn vacation lands of southern Utah becomes a meditation on mythology, authenticity, the ethics of preservation, and one nagging question: Who owns the past?
Women of Okinawa
Author: Ruth Ann Keyso
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801486654
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 204
Book Description
"Three of the women were born before the Pacific War, and their first memories of Americans are of troops coming ashore with bayonets fixed. A second group, now middle-aged, grew up in the 1950s and 1960s, when massive American bases were a fixture of the landscape. The youngest women, for whom the bases are a historical accident, are in their twenties and thirties, raised in a country increasingly confident of its status as a world power.".
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801486654
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 204
Book Description
"Three of the women were born before the Pacific War, and their first memories of Americans are of troops coming ashore with bayonets fixed. A second group, now middle-aged, grew up in the 1950s and 1960s, when massive American bases were a fixture of the landscape. The youngest women, for whom the bases are a historical accident, are in their twenties and thirties, raised in a country increasingly confident of its status as a world power.".
The Girl with the White Flag
Author: 比嘉富子
Publisher: Kodansha International
ISBN: 9784770029317
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 148
Book Description
In 1945 Okinawa, a seven year old girl is wandering about carrying a white flag.
Publisher: Kodansha International
ISBN: 9784770029317
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 148
Book Description
In 1945 Okinawa, a seven year old girl is wandering about carrying a white flag.
The Language of Blood
Author: Jane Jeong Trenka
Publisher: Minnesota Historical Society Press
ISBN: 9780873514668
Category : Adopted children
Languages : en
Pages : 240
Book Description
An adoptee's search for identity takes her on a journey from Minnesota to Korea and back as she seeks to resolve the dualities that have long defined her life: Korean-born, American-raised, never fully belonging to either. For years, Korean adoptee Jane Jeong Trenka tried to be the ideal daughter. She was always polite, earned perfect grades, and excelled as a concert pianist. She went to church with her American family in small-town Minnesota and learned not to ask about the mother who had given her away. Then, while she was far from home on a music scholarship, living in a big city for the first time, one of her fellow university students began to follow her, his obsession ultimately escalating into a plot for her murder. In radiant prose that ranges seamlessly from pure lyricism to harrowing realism, Trenka recounts repeated close encounters with her stalker and the years of repressed questions that her ordeal awakened. Determined not to be defined by her stalker's twisted assessment of her worth, she struck out in search of her own identity - free of western stereotypes of geishas and good girls. Doing so, however, meant confronting her American family and fighting the bureaucracy at the agency that had arranged for her adoption. Jane Jeong Trenka dares to ask fundamental questions about the nature of family and identity. Are we who we decide to be, or who other people would make us? What is this bond more powerful than words, this unspoken language of blood? To find out, Trenka must reacquaint herself with her mother and sisters in Seoul and devise a way to blend two distinct cultures into one she seared into the memory by indelible images and unforgettable prose. This is a poetic tour-de-force by an essential new voice in Asian American literature.
Publisher: Minnesota Historical Society Press
ISBN: 9780873514668
Category : Adopted children
Languages : en
Pages : 240
Book Description
An adoptee's search for identity takes her on a journey from Minnesota to Korea and back as she seeks to resolve the dualities that have long defined her life: Korean-born, American-raised, never fully belonging to either. For years, Korean adoptee Jane Jeong Trenka tried to be the ideal daughter. She was always polite, earned perfect grades, and excelled as a concert pianist. She went to church with her American family in small-town Minnesota and learned not to ask about the mother who had given her away. Then, while she was far from home on a music scholarship, living in a big city for the first time, one of her fellow university students began to follow her, his obsession ultimately escalating into a plot for her murder. In radiant prose that ranges seamlessly from pure lyricism to harrowing realism, Trenka recounts repeated close encounters with her stalker and the years of repressed questions that her ordeal awakened. Determined not to be defined by her stalker's twisted assessment of her worth, she struck out in search of her own identity - free of western stereotypes of geishas and good girls. Doing so, however, meant confronting her American family and fighting the bureaucracy at the agency that had arranged for her adoption. Jane Jeong Trenka dares to ask fundamental questions about the nature of family and identity. Are we who we decide to be, or who other people would make us? What is this bond more powerful than words, this unspoken language of blood? To find out, Trenka must reacquaint herself with her mother and sisters in Seoul and devise a way to blend two distinct cultures into one she seared into the memory by indelible images and unforgettable prose. This is a poetic tour-de-force by an essential new voice in Asian American literature.
Okinawa
Author: Susumu Higa
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781683961185
Category : Comics & Graphic Novels
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
Okinawa brings together two collections of intertwined stories by the island's pre-eminent mangaka, Susumu Higa, which reflect on this difficult history and pull together traditional Okinawan spirituality, the modern-day realities of the continuing US military occupation, and the senselessness of the War. The first collection, Sword of Sand , is a ground level, unflinching look at the horrors of the Battle of Okinawa. Higa then turns an observant eye to the present-day in Mabui (Okinawan for "spirit"), where he explores how the American occupation has irreversibly changed the island prefecture, through the lens of the archipelago's indigenous spirituality and the central character of the yuta priestess.
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781683961185
Category : Comics & Graphic Novels
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
Okinawa brings together two collections of intertwined stories by the island's pre-eminent mangaka, Susumu Higa, which reflect on this difficult history and pull together traditional Okinawan spirituality, the modern-day realities of the continuing US military occupation, and the senselessness of the War. The first collection, Sword of Sand , is a ground level, unflinching look at the horrors of the Battle of Okinawa. Higa then turns an observant eye to the present-day in Mabui (Okinawan for "spirit"), where he explores how the American occupation has irreversibly changed the island prefecture, through the lens of the archipelago's indigenous spirituality and the central character of the yuta priestess.
Eat a Peach
Author: David Chang
Publisher: Clarkson Potter
ISBN: 1524759228
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 306
Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the chef behind Momofuku and star of Netflix’s Ugly Delicious—an intimate account of the making of a chef, the story of the modern restaurant world that he helped shape, and how he discovered that success can be much harder to understand than failure. ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: NPR, Fortune, Parade, The New York Public Library, Garden & Gun In 2004, Momofuku Noodle Bar opened in a tiny, stark space in Manhattan’s East Village. Its young chef-owner, David Chang, worked the line, serving ramen and pork buns to a mix of fellow restaurant cooks and confused diners whose idea of ramen was instant noodles in Styrofoam cups. It would have been impossible to know it at the time—and certainly Chang would have bet against himself—but he, who had failed at almost every endeavor in his life, was about to become one of the most influential chefs of his generation, driven by the question, “What if the underground could become the mainstream?” Chang grew up the youngest son of a deeply religious Korean American family in Virginia. Graduating college aimless and depressed, he fled the States for Japan, hoping to find some sense of belonging. While teaching English in a backwater town, he experienced the highs of his first full-blown manic episode, and began to think that the cooking and sharing of food could give him both purpose and agency in his life. Full of grace, candor, grit, and humor, Eat a Peach chronicles Chang’s switchback path. He lays bare his mistakes and wonders about his extraordinary luck as he recounts the improbable series of events that led him to the top of his profession. He wrestles with his lifelong feelings of otherness and inadequacy, explores the mental illness that almost killed him, and finds hope in the shared value of deliciousness. Along the way, Chang gives us a penetrating look at restaurant life, in which he balances his deep love for the kitchen with unflinching honesty about the industry’s history of brutishness and its uncertain future.
Publisher: Clarkson Potter
ISBN: 1524759228
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 306
Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the chef behind Momofuku and star of Netflix’s Ugly Delicious—an intimate account of the making of a chef, the story of the modern restaurant world that he helped shape, and how he discovered that success can be much harder to understand than failure. ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: NPR, Fortune, Parade, The New York Public Library, Garden & Gun In 2004, Momofuku Noodle Bar opened in a tiny, stark space in Manhattan’s East Village. Its young chef-owner, David Chang, worked the line, serving ramen and pork buns to a mix of fellow restaurant cooks and confused diners whose idea of ramen was instant noodles in Styrofoam cups. It would have been impossible to know it at the time—and certainly Chang would have bet against himself—but he, who had failed at almost every endeavor in his life, was about to become one of the most influential chefs of his generation, driven by the question, “What if the underground could become the mainstream?” Chang grew up the youngest son of a deeply religious Korean American family in Virginia. Graduating college aimless and depressed, he fled the States for Japan, hoping to find some sense of belonging. While teaching English in a backwater town, he experienced the highs of his first full-blown manic episode, and began to think that the cooking and sharing of food could give him both purpose and agency in his life. Full of grace, candor, grit, and humor, Eat a Peach chronicles Chang’s switchback path. He lays bare his mistakes and wonders about his extraordinary luck as he recounts the improbable series of events that led him to the top of his profession. He wrestles with his lifelong feelings of otherness and inadequacy, explores the mental illness that almost killed him, and finds hope in the shared value of deliciousness. Along the way, Chang gives us a penetrating look at restaurant life, in which he balances his deep love for the kitchen with unflinching honesty about the industry’s history of brutishness and its uncertain future.
The Other Half of Happy
Author: Rebecca Balcárcel
Publisher: Chronicle Books
ISBN: 1452170002
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 337
Book Description
Quijana is a girl in pieces. One-half Guatemalan, one-half American: When Quijana's Guatemalan cousins move to town, her dad seems ashamed that she doesn't know more about her family's heritage. One-half crush, one-half buddy: When Quijana meets Zuri and Jayden, she knows she's found true friends. But she can't help the growing feelings she has for Jayden. One-half kid, one-half grown-up: Quijana spends her nights Skyping with her ailing grandma and trying to figure out what's going on with her increasingly hard-to-reach brother. In the course of this immersive and beautifully written novel, Quijana must figure out which parts of herself are most important, and which pieces come together to make her whole. This lyrical debut from Rebecca Balcárcel is a heartfelt poetic portrayal of a girl growing up, fitting in, and learning what it means to belong.
Publisher: Chronicle Books
ISBN: 1452170002
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 337
Book Description
Quijana is a girl in pieces. One-half Guatemalan, one-half American: When Quijana's Guatemalan cousins move to town, her dad seems ashamed that she doesn't know more about her family's heritage. One-half crush, one-half buddy: When Quijana meets Zuri and Jayden, she knows she's found true friends. But she can't help the growing feelings she has for Jayden. One-half kid, one-half grown-up: Quijana spends her nights Skyping with her ailing grandma and trying to figure out what's going on with her increasingly hard-to-reach brother. In the course of this immersive and beautifully written novel, Quijana must figure out which parts of herself are most important, and which pieces come together to make her whole. This lyrical debut from Rebecca Balcárcel is a heartfelt poetic portrayal of a girl growing up, fitting in, and learning what it means to belong.
Black Is the Body
Author: Emily Bernard
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0451493036
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 242
Book Description
“Blackness is an art, not a science. It is a paradox: intangible and visceral; a situation and a story. It is the thread that connects these essays, but its significance as an experience emerges randomly, unpredictably. . . . Race is the story of my life, and therefore black is the body of this book.” In these twelve deeply personal, connected essays, Bernard details the experience of growing up black in the south with a family name inherited from a white man, surviving a random stabbing at a New Haven coffee shop, marrying a white man from the North and bringing him home to her family, adopting two children from Ethiopia, and living and teaching in a primarily white New England college town. Each of these essays sets out to discover a new way of talking about race and of telling the truth as the author has lived it. "Black Is the Body is one of the most beautiful, elegant memoirs I've ever read. It's about race, it's about womanhood, it's about friendship, it's about a life of the mind, and also a life of the body. But more than anything, it's about love. I can't praise Emily Bernard enough for what she has created in these pages." --Elizabeth Gilbert WINNER OF THE CHRISTOPHER ISHERWOOD PRIZE FOR AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL PROSE NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY NPR AND KIRKUS REVIEWS ONE OF MAUREEN CORRIGAN'S 10 UNPUTDOWNABLE READS OF THE YEAR
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0451493036
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 242
Book Description
“Blackness is an art, not a science. It is a paradox: intangible and visceral; a situation and a story. It is the thread that connects these essays, but its significance as an experience emerges randomly, unpredictably. . . . Race is the story of my life, and therefore black is the body of this book.” In these twelve deeply personal, connected essays, Bernard details the experience of growing up black in the south with a family name inherited from a white man, surviving a random stabbing at a New Haven coffee shop, marrying a white man from the North and bringing him home to her family, adopting two children from Ethiopia, and living and teaching in a primarily white New England college town. Each of these essays sets out to discover a new way of talking about race and of telling the truth as the author has lived it. "Black Is the Body is one of the most beautiful, elegant memoirs I've ever read. It's about race, it's about womanhood, it's about friendship, it's about a life of the mind, and also a life of the body. But more than anything, it's about love. I can't praise Emily Bernard enough for what she has created in these pages." --Elizabeth Gilbert WINNER OF THE CHRISTOPHER ISHERWOOD PRIZE FOR AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL PROSE NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY NPR AND KIRKUS REVIEWS ONE OF MAUREEN CORRIGAN'S 10 UNPUTDOWNABLE READS OF THE YEAR
My Mother's Daughter
Author: Perdita Felicien
Publisher: Anchor Canada
ISBN: 0385689985
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 321
Book Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER "A phenomenal, human story. . . . I could not put this book down." —CLARA HUGHES An instant national bestseller, this raw and affecting memoir is the story of a mother and daughter who beat the odds together. Decades before Perdita Felicien became a World Champion hurdler running the biggest race of her life at the 2004 Olympics, she carried more than a nation's hopes—she carried her mother Catherine's dreams. In 1974, Catherine is determined and tenacious, but she's also pregnant with her second child and just scraping by in St. Lucia. When she meets a wealthy white Canadian family vacationing on the island, she knows it's her chance. They ask her to come to Canada to be their nanny—and she accepts. This was the beginning of Catherine's new life: a life of opportunity, but also suffering. Within a few years, she would find herself pregnant a third time—this time in her new country with no family to support her, and this time, with Perdita. Together, in the years to come, mother and daughter would experience racism, domestic abuse, and even homelessness, but Catherine's will would always pull them through. As Perdita grew and began to discover her preternatural athletic gifts, she was edged onward by her mother's love, grit, and faith. Facing literal and figurative hurdles, she learned to leap and pick herself back up when she stumbled. This book is a daughter's memoir—a book about the power of a parent's love to transform their child's life.
Publisher: Anchor Canada
ISBN: 0385689985
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 321
Book Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER "A phenomenal, human story. . . . I could not put this book down." —CLARA HUGHES An instant national bestseller, this raw and affecting memoir is the story of a mother and daughter who beat the odds together. Decades before Perdita Felicien became a World Champion hurdler running the biggest race of her life at the 2004 Olympics, she carried more than a nation's hopes—she carried her mother Catherine's dreams. In 1974, Catherine is determined and tenacious, but she's also pregnant with her second child and just scraping by in St. Lucia. When she meets a wealthy white Canadian family vacationing on the island, she knows it's her chance. They ask her to come to Canada to be their nanny—and she accepts. This was the beginning of Catherine's new life: a life of opportunity, but also suffering. Within a few years, she would find herself pregnant a third time—this time in her new country with no family to support her, and this time, with Perdita. Together, in the years to come, mother and daughter would experience racism, domestic abuse, and even homelessness, but Catherine's will would always pull them through. As Perdita grew and began to discover her preternatural athletic gifts, she was edged onward by her mother's love, grit, and faith. Facing literal and figurative hurdles, she learned to leap and pick herself back up when she stumbled. This book is a daughter's memoir—a book about the power of a parent's love to transform their child's life.