They always say immersion is one of the best ways to learn a language, but when your parents send you to Japan to live with your grandmother for 5 months, it sounds like punishment. That’s where we start with Waka in WHILE I WAS AWAY, Waka T. Brown’s middle grade memoir, out Tuesday, 1/26.
While I Was Away is a lovely, quietly reflective story about walking in two cultures. About being a fish out of water who learns to swim. It offers readers a window in 1980s Japan (and Kansas) and what it is to live in a culture that’s totally familiar yet views you as different.
For Waka, there couldn’t be a worse time to be separated from your friends and everything that’s familiar. But the experience turns into an opportunity to learn more about her family, herself, and how both Japanese and American cultures shape her view of the world.
I loved that Brown included visual examples of shuuji, Japanese calligraphy, and explained a bit about kanji, hiragana, and how the language works.
That said, this is 6th/7th grade and it’s not always pretty. There’s teasing and bullying, having to choose between friend groups, and even an episode where her grandmother accuses her of lying and locks her out of the house. Waka is direct about sharing her thoughts and feelings about all of these things with the reader. You can see the lessons she’s learned and how she’ll walk through the world taking shape. And I loved that in the end, she reflects on the entire experience, rather than leaving it open ended.
As an adult reader of Japanese descent, this memoir was filled with nostalgia — hearing Waka talk about collecting stickers and and sending letters on thin blue Airmail, being obsessed with pencils and erasers and cute stationery (that stays with you lifelong it turns out), but the details never make it feel like this is ancient history.
I especially loved that this book illuminates another facet of the Japanese American experience, highlighting families who immigrated in the 70s and 80s and had American born kids.
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For more books about the Japanese American experience, check out:
We Are Not Free by Traci Chee (YA)
Displacement by Kiku Hughes (YA Graphic Novel)
This Time Will be Different by Misa Sugiura (YA)
