While I Was Away
While I Was Away by Waka T. Brown is a middle grade memoir published by HarperCollins Publishers on December 21, 2021. This 336-page book invites readers into the author’s journey to 1980s Japan, where she is sent as a child to reconnect with her family’s roots. The narrative follows twelve-year-old Waka as she navigates the challenges of culture shock after being uprooted from her life in rural Kansas to live with her strict grandmother in Tokyo.
In this memoir, Waka faces significant obstacles, including struggles with the Japanese language and feelings of alienation among her peers. The book explores themes of identity and belonging as Waka grapples with her dual heritage, feeling like an outsider in both Japan and America. Readers will find a poignant exploration of family, culture, and the complexities of growing up between two worlds. This edition is presented in English and offers insights into the historical and cultural context of Japan during the 1980s.
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Named one of New York Public Library’s & Bank Street’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 family’s roots.
When twelve-year-old Waka’s parents suspect she can’t 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, doesn’t 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 she’s 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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