Speak, Okinawa
Metadata
Highlights
- Yet these memories are impossible to forget, regardless of whether we actually lived through them. I believe they stay in our bodies. As sickness, as addiction, as poor posture or a tendency toward apology, as a deepened capacity for sadness or anger. As determination to survive, a relentless tempered optimism. I believe they are inherited, passed on to us like brown eyes or the shape of a nose. (Location 121)
- We are smiling because we are happy. I am a small child and I don’t know what sadness is yet, and therefore I make everyone happy. (Location 150)
- Not yet aware of the ease with which she conceived and uttered the word “let,” the ease with which I heard and processed it. We accepted the word without resistance, with a nod of approval. (Location 217)
- Why didn’t I learn Japanese? Why didn’t my father learn, and require me to learn, like he required my mother to learn English? Perhaps ethnocentrism is to blame. Perhaps learning a language that wasn’t European wasn’t very popular in the 1980s. Perhaps my father heeded what the psychologists were claiming at the time, that learning two or more languages at once would confuse children. Perhaps he remembered my grandfather, who was fluent in five languages but didn’t graduate from high school until he was twenty-one years old. Perhaps my father, as a man, an American man who grew up in the 1950s, couldn’t quite empathize, couldn’t quite anticipate the isolation of his wife, the strain on the relationship between her and her daughter. Perhaps part of him enjoyed being everything for her, doing everything for her. Or perhaps he tried and failed or tried and gave up, couldn’t (Location 222)
- Is love possible in a place like this, in a situation like this, between two people from separate worlds, on opposite sides of war and conquest? (Location 249)
- Now, whenever I try to comprehend her loneliness, I am completely overwhelmed by her strength. She must have longed for that small child in the photographs. She must have ached from missing me. (Location 313)
- She told me that, after we returned to the United States, she would speak to me in Japanese, and at first I responded, but then I stopped answering, and then, eventually, I stopped listening. Everywhere around me, English. Everywhere around my mother, English. I adapted. She could not. So I abandoned her. (Location 316)
- I ask my mother obvious questions, the same questions again and again, because this is the necessary nature of our interactions. The only way we know how to talk. About the concrete, the immediate, the here and now. Otherwise, there is mostly silence between us. (Location 391)
- There are answers I want, but questions I don’t know how to ask. Or maybe I’m too afraid, too lazy to ask. (Location 416)
- Because even though my mother understands and speaks English at a highly functional level, there are places inside me she can’t reach, nuances of thought and emotion I can’t express in words that make sense to her. (Location 420)
- And there is more to a language barrier than mere lack of shared vocabulary. There is a clash of history and culture. There is an imbalance of power. I grew up in the United States, a nation of triumph and abundance. My mother grew up in Okinawa, a colony, a pawn, subjugated and impoverished. (Location 429)
- It took me too long to accept and appreciate my mother’s English. Her simplicity and directness. Her words for household items, such as “remako” (remote control) and “reku puraiya” (record player). The way she mixes up the pronouns “he” and “she.” (Location 458)
- Eventually I realized that the world is certainly big enough for her English, for all Englishes, for all the languages and dialects, each one another history, another journey, another map by which we discover ourselves. Eventually I realized that it is my responsibility to understand her, not her responsibility to make herself understood. (Location 460)
- The living spent our hours fishing, cooking, eating, weaving, singing, dancing, birthing and raising children. The living wore dresses and long hair tied in knots on the top of our heads, held in place by wooden pins. The dead spent our hours heating the sun, shining the moon, swaying the trees, and stirring the ocean. The dead gave warmth and light, fruit and fish. The living and the dead were the same, just as the gods and the people were the same. (Location 497)
- These are the first lessons we are taught in preschool. Which one is not like the others? We are taught to match. Colors with corresponding colors, shapes with corresponding shapes, fruits with other fruits, a tree does not belong in the group labeled “animal.” We are taught that sameness is correct. Sameness is desired. (Location 575)
- She is not happy. But maybe she is more relieved than resigned. So she leans her head against the window. (Location 611)
- I’m afraid to let her speak. I’m afraid of how her accent and pronunciation reflect on me. Or maybe it is my fear that embarrasses her. (Location 724)
- She is laughing and clapping. I realize that she has purposely disobeyed me, and I almost get angry. But I’m too excited. For whatever reason, my mother will always trust me more than I trust her. (Location 731)
New highlights added October 20, 2022 at 2:08 PM
- I developed an intense, frantic desire to be in love. The kind of love that exists in sitcoms and movies. The kind of love that is total acceptance and consumption of another person, a feeling of wholeness, nothing left lacking that could lead to loneliness, regret, an affair. The kind of love that could undo unhappiness, prevent me from becoming my mother: married to a man who hardly touched her, who treated her more like a daughter than a wife. The kind of love that could redeem her sacrifice, a sacrifice I always resented. I threw myself at boys, saying yes to anything any of them asked, hoping they would succumb to gratitude and throw themselves back. (Location 1318)
- We stay under the table and cry for a long time. We cry for everything we can never be for each other. We cry because we forgive each other. Because if it’s not her fault then it’s not my fault. Because words are meaningless. (Location 1367)
- Before she joined the congregation, before she stopped drinking, maybe she was resisting. Maybe she was keeping a barrier, keeping her distance, allowing herself a figment of an escape. Maybe she was drinking to numb herself but also to feel—really, really feel—her sadness, keep it close to her, keep it around her. I remember when she used to call me drunk and sobbing, used to tell me she wished she could leave my father, wished she could go back to Okinawa. (Location 1434)
- My mother before me is a story. A story she can’t tell me in her own language. A story, she claims, she barely remembers. Or maybe she doesn’t want to remember. Or maybe she can’t remember because she was never taught how to remember. Because she was never told her life is important enough to remember. (Location 1640)
New highlights added October 21, 2022 at 4:21 AM
- Because of my mother, her upbringing, her history, because of how her life and past shaped the way I inhabited the world, the way the world inhabited me, maybe I could understand more, just a little bit more, what it was like to be them. Because of my mother, maybe when they looked at me they didn’t see the type of face that represented everything that was stolen and withheld from them. Because of my mother, maybe we were more, just a little bit more, the same. (Location 2220)
New highlights added October 23, 2022 at 7:06 AM
- And by God, I guess I mean life—this life, every life, this history, every history, every intricate unfolding of time. The only ones we’ll ever live. The only ones we’ll ever know. Just like our own mothers, I think. The only ones we’ll ever know. (Location 2378)
New highlights added October 24, 2022 at 1:41 PM
- When I was growing up, White was always what I strived to be, and White always felt just beyond reach. Except that I was already White. White was how I viewed the world, looked out at the world, no matter what the world saw when it looked back at me. (Location 2542)
- I believe we inherit sin as much as we inherit trauma. I believe inherited sin is its own form of trauma. But maybe we have a chance at redemption. By being aware, being honest. By giving up power. By letting the world change. By changing ourselves. By apologizing. By forgiving? (Location 2552)
New highlights added October 26, 2022 at 1:30 AM
- I feel worshipped and unworthy. Not just now, but whenever I’m with them, I’m in so many places at once, so many places without them, feeling like my life is on hold, like I’m stuck on a distant orbit and everywhere else time is passing, everywhere else life is happening. (Location 2868)
- Stay here. Stay here, goddamnit. You need to fucking be here for this. (Location 2929)
- I used to deny my parents’ love for each other, because I didn’t understand it, because it didn’t fit some mold, didn’t align with some image of love I had conjured. I thought that love, true love, should involve something more than just commitment. (Location 3314)
- Maybe love is choosing to stay. Maybe love is choosing to stay every day until the choice becomes permanent. (Location 3319)
New highlights added October 27, 2022 at 2:12 PM
- With every apology, they seemed to acknowledge that their actions affected me, that all of our actions affect each other. I felt like part of a whole. Like they were humbling themselves, making themselves small in order to make room for me. This culture of apology felt familiar, comforting, like I had found something I didn’t know I was missing. (Location 3745)
- wish I could locate a precise point of transformation, the pivotal moment when my mother and I finally reconciled. But that’s not how we apologize and forgive. The healing is gradual, cumulative. It happens as we begin to recognize our mothers not as mothers, but as women who endure husbands and daughters. It happens as we begin to accept and appreciate our very own exquisite uniqueness, and everyone we hold responsible. (Location 3782)
title: “Speak, Okinawa”
author: “Elizabeth Miki Brina”
url: ""
date: 2023-12-19
source: kindle
tags: media/books
Speak, Okinawa
Metadata
Highlights
- Yet these memories are impossible to forget, regardless of whether we actually lived through them. I believe they stay in our bodies. As sickness, as addiction, as poor posture or a tendency toward apology, as a deepened capacity for sadness or anger. As determination to survive, a relentless tempered optimism. I believe they are inherited, passed on to us like brown eyes or the shape of a nose. (Location 121)
- We are smiling because we are happy. I am a small child and I don’t know what sadness is yet, and therefore I make everyone happy. (Location 150)
- Not yet aware of the ease with which she conceived and uttered the word “let,” the ease with which I heard and processed it. We accepted the word without resistance, with a nod of approval. (Location 217)
- Why didn’t I learn Japanese? Why didn’t my father learn, and require me to learn, like he required my mother to learn English? Perhaps ethnocentrism is to blame. Perhaps learning a language that wasn’t European wasn’t very popular in the 1980s. Perhaps my father heeded what the psychologists were claiming at the time, that learning two or more languages at once would confuse children. Perhaps he remembered my grandfather, who was fluent in five languages but didn’t graduate from high school until he was twenty-one years old. Perhaps my father, as a man, an American man who grew up in the 1950s, couldn’t quite empathize, couldn’t quite anticipate the isolation of his wife, the strain on the relationship between her and her daughter. Perhaps part of him enjoyed being everything for her, doing everything for her. Or perhaps he tried and failed or tried and gave up, couldn’t (Location 222)
- Is love possible in a place like this, in a situation like this, between two people from separate worlds, on opposite sides of war and conquest? (Location 249)
- Now, whenever I try to comprehend her loneliness, I am completely overwhelmed by her strength. She must have longed for that small child in the photographs. She must have ached from missing me. (Location 313)
- She told me that, after we returned to the United States, she would speak to me in Japanese, and at first I responded, but then I stopped answering, and then, eventually, I stopped listening. Everywhere around me, English. Everywhere around my mother, English. I adapted. She could not. So I abandoned her. (Location 316)
- I ask my mother obvious questions, the same questions again and again, because this is the necessary nature of our interactions. The only way we know how to talk. About the concrete, the immediate, the here and now. Otherwise, there is mostly silence between us. (Location 391)
- There are answers I want, but questions I don’t know how to ask. Or maybe I’m too afraid, too lazy to ask. (Location 416)
- Because even though my mother understands and speaks English at a highly functional level, there are places inside me she can’t reach, nuances of thought and emotion I can’t express in words that make sense to her. (Location 420)
- And there is more to a language barrier than mere lack of shared vocabulary. There is a clash of history and culture. There is an imbalance of power. I grew up in the United States, a nation of triumph and abundance. My mother grew up in Okinawa, a colony, a pawn, subjugated and impoverished. (Location 429)
- It took me too long to accept and appreciate my mother’s English. Her simplicity and directness. Her words for household items, such as “remako” (remote control) and “reku puraiya” (record player). The way she mixes up the pronouns “he” and “she.” (Location 458)
- Eventually I realized that the world is certainly big enough for her English, for all Englishes, for all the languages and dialects, each one another history, another journey, another map by which we discover ourselves. Eventually I realized that it is my responsibility to understand her, not her responsibility to make herself understood. (Location 460)
- The living spent our hours fishing, cooking, eating, weaving, singing, dancing, birthing and raising children. The living wore dresses and long hair tied in knots on the top of our heads, held in place by wooden pins. The dead spent our hours heating the sun, shining the moon, swaying the trees, and stirring the ocean. The dead gave warmth and light, fruit and fish. The living and the dead were the same, just as the gods and the people were the same. (Location 497)
- These are the first lessons we are taught in preschool. Which one is not like the others? We are taught to match. Colors with corresponding colors, shapes with corresponding shapes, fruits with other fruits, a tree does not belong in the group labeled “animal.” We are taught that sameness is correct. Sameness is desired. (Location 575)
- She is not happy. But maybe she is more relieved than resigned. So she leans her head against the window. (Location 611)
- I’m afraid to let her speak. I’m afraid of how her accent and pronunciation reflect on me. Or maybe it is my fear that embarrasses her. (Location 724)
- She is laughing and clapping. I realize that she has purposely disobeyed me, and I almost get angry. But I’m too excited. For whatever reason, my mother will always trust me more than I trust her. (Location 731)
- I developed an intense, frantic desire to be in love. The kind of love that exists in sitcoms and movies. The kind of love that is total acceptance and consumption of another person, a feeling of wholeness, nothing left lacking that could lead to loneliness, regret, an affair. The kind of love that could undo unhappiness, prevent me from becoming my mother: married to a man who hardly touched her, who treated her more like a daughter than a wife. The kind of love that could redeem her sacrifice, a sacrifice I always resented. I threw myself at boys, saying yes to anything any of them asked, hoping they would succumb to gratitude and throw themselves back. (Location 1318)
- We stay under the table and cry for a long time. We cry for everything we can never be for each other. We cry because we forgive each other. Because if it’s not her fault then it’s not my fault. Because words are meaningless. (Location 1367)
- Before she joined the congregation, before she stopped drinking, maybe she was resisting. Maybe she was keeping a barrier, keeping her distance, allowing herself a figment of an escape. Maybe she was drinking to numb herself but also to feel—really, really feel—her sadness, keep it close to her, keep it around her. I remember when she used to call me drunk and sobbing, used to tell me she wished she could leave my father, wished she could go back to Okinawa. (Location 1434)
- My mother before me is a story. A story she can’t tell me in her own language. A story, she claims, she barely remembers. Or maybe she doesn’t want to remember. Or maybe she can’t remember because she was never taught how to remember. Because she was never told her life is important enough to remember. (Location 1640)
- Because of my mother, her upbringing, her history, because of how her life and past shaped the way I inhabited the world, the way the world inhabited me, maybe I could understand more, just a little bit more, what it was like to be them. Because of my mother, maybe when they looked at me they didn’t see the type of face that represented everything that was stolen and withheld from them. Because of my mother, maybe we were more, just a little bit more, the same. (Location 2220)
- And by God, I guess I mean life—this life, every life, this history, every history, every intricate unfolding of time. The only ones we’ll ever live. The only ones we’ll ever know. Just like our own mothers, I think. The only ones we’ll ever know. (Location 2378)
- When I was growing up, White was always what I strived to be, and White always felt just beyond reach. Except that I was already White. White was how I viewed the world, looked out at the world, no matter what the world saw when it looked back at me. (Location 2542)
- I believe we inherit sin as much as we inherit trauma. I believe inherited sin is its own form of trauma. But maybe we have a chance at redemption. By being aware, being honest. By giving up power. By letting the world change. By changing ourselves. By apologizing. By forgiving? (Location 2552)
- I feel worshipped and unworthy. Not just now, but whenever I’m with them, I’m in so many places at once, so many places without them, feeling like my life is on hold, like I’m stuck on a distant orbit and everywhere else time is passing, everywhere else life is happening. (Location 2868)
- Stay here. Stay here, goddamnit. You need to fucking be here for this. (Location 2929)
- I used to deny my parents’ love for each other, because I didn’t understand it, because it didn’t fit some mold, didn’t align with some image of love I had conjured. I thought that love, true love, should involve something more than just commitment. (Location 3314)
- Maybe love is choosing to stay. Maybe love is choosing to stay every day until the choice becomes permanent. (Location 3319)
- With every apology, they seemed to acknowledge that their actions affected me, that all of our actions affect each other. I felt like part of a whole. Like they were humbling themselves, making themselves small in order to make room for me. This culture of apology felt familiar, comforting, like I had found something I didn’t know I was missing. (Location 3745)
- wish I could locate a precise point of transformation, the pivotal moment when my mother and I finally reconciled. But that’s not how we apologize and forgive. The healing is gradual, cumulative. It happens as we begin to recognize our mothers not as mothers, but as women who endure husbands and daughters. It happens as we begin to accept and appreciate our very own exquisite uniqueness, and everyone we hold responsible. (Location 3782)