Speak, Okinawa: A Memoir

"Elizabeth Miki Brina’s mother met her GI father at a nightclub in Okinawa, Japan, where she was a hostess. He married her and they settled in an all-white suburb in America, where they raised their daughter. Brina writes unflinchingly about feeling ashamed of her mother and her “otherness” and how she worked to overcome that shame. As a Japanese American who also grew up in a mostly white town, I could relate. But I also learned about Okinawa, its second-class status to the rest of Japan and its fraught relationship with the United States, which continues to maintain a military presence there."