A review by tammys_take
While I Was Away by Waka T. Brown

5.0

It’s not often I have come across a middle grade memoir, and this one was exceptional!! Waka is a twelve year old Japanese American girl growing up in Kansas. One day when she ignores her mother’s directions in Japanese to help fold the laundry, her mother becomes concerned that Waka is forgetting Japanese. Her family decides to send her to Japan to live with her grandmother for 5 months and to attend school to practice her Japanese. This story was so immersive, I felt like I was going to school with Waka and learning the culture and customs, too. Her experiences with friendship, family, alone-ness, and cultural identity are so relatable as someone with mixed heritage. I found her experiences of self growth painful, awkward, beautiful, and joyful. The relationship Waka has with her grandmother while complicated, was so profound and moving. I cried, a lot, at the end.