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While I Was Away
While I Was Away | Waka T. Brown
3 posts | 2 read | 1 to read
Named one of New York Public Library's Best Books of the Year! The Farewell meets Erin Entrada Kelly's Blackbird Fly in this empowering middle grade memoir from debut author Waka T. Brown, who takes readers on a journey to 1980s Japan, where she was sent as a child to reconnect to her familys roots. When twelve-year-old Wakas parents suspect she cant understand the basic Japanese they speak to her, they make a drastic decision to send her to Tokyo to live for several months with her strict grandmother. Forced to say goodbye to her friends and what would have been her summer vacation, Waka is plucked from her straight-A-student life in rural Kansas and flown across the globe, where she faces the culture shock of a lifetime. In Japan, Waka struggles with reading and writing in kanji, doesnt quite mesh with her complicated and distant Obaasama, and gets made fun of by the students in her Japanese public-school classes. Even though this is the country her parents came from, Waka has never felt more like an outsider. If shes always been the smart Japanese girl in America but is now the dumb foreigner in Japan, where is home...and who will Waka be when she finds it?
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Imagen_leigh
While I Was Away | Waka T. Brown

I thought the funniest line in the book was when Waka‘s grandma told her, “A lot of Japanese women, their butts are quite flat. You should be happy yours isn‘t.” 😂😂

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Imagen_leigh
While I Was Away | Waka T. Brown
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Pickpick

As it turns out, I am beginning to enjoy biographies, autobiographies, and memoirs more than I thought I would, especially ones written for young adult readers. I like how this one felt like a fiction story about a young girl and not a chronological list of facts about the author‘s life. It made the reading easy and enjoyable.

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Nebklvr
While I Was Away | Waka T. Brown
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Pickpick

This was a bittersweet memoir of an American girl being sent back to Japan to learn more Japanese, her parents‘ native language. Culture shock, family issues, and school woes plague her but Waka faces challenges with pride and grit. Regret tinges the ending and I wish it had been a lighter ending but there lies the difference between truth and fiction.

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