A review by liralen
While I Was Away by Waka T. Brown
4.0
What a compelling look at a bicultural experience. When Brown was a preteen, her parents decided that her Japanese wasn't up to snuff and sent her to spend five months with her grandmother—attending a Japanese school and generally connecting with her family's culture in a way that was not possible in Kansas. Brown was fortunate in that not only did she already speak Japanese well, her Japanese teachers were prepared to meet her where she was in terms of reading and writing skills.
There are natural threads of tension woven throughout, from Brown's trepidation over living with her grandmother (who has had a hard life and is known in the family as a forbidding figure) to how to manage a different schoolmate social structure than she's used to in Kansas to whether Brown's Japanese will improve to a level she—and her family—is satisfied with. This definitely feels like a book that should make its way to many middle school and high school libraries.
There are natural threads of tension woven throughout, from Brown's trepidation over living with her grandmother (who has had a hard life and is known in the family as a forbidding figure) to how to manage a different schoolmate social structure than she's used to in Kansas to whether Brown's Japanese will improve to a level she—and her family—is satisfied with. This definitely feels like a book that should make its way to many middle school and high school libraries.