While I Was Away, Waka T. Brown
While I Was Away, Waka T. Brown
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List: $20.99 | Sale: $14.70
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While I Was Away

Author: Waka T. Brown

Narrator: Chieko Hidaka

Unabridged: 7 hr 2 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 01/26/2021


Synopsis

Named one of New York Public Library's & Bank Street's Best Books of the Year!The Farewell meets Erin Entrada Kelly's Blackbird Fly in this empowering middle grade memoir from debut author Waka T. Brown, who takes readers on a journey to 1980s Japan, where she was sent as a child to reconnect to her family’s roots.When twelve-year-old Waka’s parents suspect she can’t understand the basic Japanese they speak to her, they make a drastic decision to send her to Tokyo to live for several months with her strict grandmother. Forced to say goodbye to her friends and what would have been her summer vacation, Waka is plucked from her straight-A-student life in rural Kansas and flown across the globe, where she faces the culture shock of a lifetime.In Japan, Waka struggles with reading and writing in kanji, doesn’t quite mesh with her complicated and distant Obaasama, and gets made fun of by the students in her Japanese public-school classes. Even though this is the country her parents came from, Waka has never felt more like an outsider.If she’s always been the “smart Japanese girl” in America but is now the “dumb foreigner” in Japan, where is home...and who will Waka be when she finds it?

About Waka T. Brown

Waka T. Brown was the first American born in her family. She is a Stanford graduate with a master’s degree in secondary education. She’s currently an instructor at the Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE), authoring curriculum on several international topics and winning the Association for Asian Studies’ national Franklin R. Buchanan Prize. She’s also been awarded the United States–Japan Foundation and EngageAsia’s national 2019 Elgin Heinz Outstanding Teacher Award for her groundbreaking endeavors in teaching about US-Japan relations to high school students in Japan and promoting cultural exchange awareness. She lives with her family in Portland, Oregon.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Betsy on November 18, 2021

Memory is unreliable. On some level we all know this to be true. Two people can live through the same experience and have two entirely different interpretations of what happened at the time. So when we run across memoirs written with young readers in mind, we have to take them with a grain of salt.......more

Goodreads review by Cindy on January 08, 2021

One of my favorite things about mentoring for #PitchWars for several years was that I got the chance to read early pages from so many wonderful books that have gone on to get published. One of those was Waka T. Brown's beautiful middle grade memoir, WHILE I WAS AWAY, which tells the story of the fiv......more

Goodreads review by farahxreads on January 19, 2023

In this memoir, Waka T. Brown recounts the months when she was sent away to Japan (against her will) because her parents suspect that their 12-year-old daughter was having trouble understanding basic Japanese. Not only that, she also has to live with her strict and grumpy grandmother that she barely......more

Goodreads review by Kaela on February 01, 2021

Wow. This book is a masterpiece. It deserves all the stars and all the awards, and the widest possible readership. If you enjoy extremely well-written books with a vivid sense of place, nuanced characterization, and wonderful detail (and humor!), do not miss this one! Some things I just loved about......more

Goodreads review by cossette on December 25, 2020

rtc! trigger warnings for: bullying, child abuse, death of a family member, mentions of war, mentions of cancer......more