“For a long time, I thought my mother was weak,” writes Elizabeth Miki Brina in her debut work “Speak, Okinawa.” “Because she couldn’t speak English well or read. Because she was afraid of pools and neighbors. Because she got drunk and sobbed inconsolably, and had to be carried, sometimes dragged, to bed.”
For many, the American Dream has a price. For Brina, the cost has been the struggle to come to terms with her bicultural roots and find a sense of belonging. For Brina’s mother, who escaped poverty in post-World War II Okinawa by marrying an American soldier from a wealthy family, it was being disconnected from her homeland and her family, particularly her daughter.
Speak, Okinawa, by Elizabeth Miki Brina304 pagesGRANTA
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