Monday, November 1, 2021 | 5:00 pm – 6:30 pm EDT
Zoom Event
Join us for a book talk with author Elizabeth Miki Brina on her book “Speak, Okinawa“
About the Book
A searing, deeply candid memoir about a young woman’s journey to understanding her complicated parents—her mother an Okinawan war bride, her father a Vietnam veteran—and her own, fraught cultural heritage.
Elizabeth’s mother was working as a nightclub hostess on U.S.-occupied Okinawa when she met the American soldier who would become her husband. The language barrier and power imbalance that defined their early relationship followed them to the predominantly white, upstate New York suburb where they moved to raise their only daughter. There, Elizabeth grew up with the trappings of a typical American childhood and adolescence. Yet even though she felt almost no connection to her mother’s distant home, she also felt out of place among her peers.
Decades later, Elizabeth comes to recognize the shame and self-loathing that haunt both her and her mother, and attempts a form of reconciliation, not only to come to terms with the embattled dynamics of her family but also to reckon with the injustices that reverberate throughout the history of Okinawa and its people. Clear-eyed and profoundly humane, Speak, Okinawa is a startling accomplishment—a heartfelt exploration of identity, inheritance, forgiveness, and what it means to be an American.
This event will be on the record and a recording will be available on the NRC YouTube channel after the event.
Registration
The event is open to the public. Registered guests will receive details for joining the Zoom meeting.
Speaker
Elizabeth Miki Brina, author, Speak, Okinawa
Discussant
Steve Rabson, Professor Emeritus of East Asian Studies, Brown University
Moderator
Kuniko Ashizawa, Adjunct Professorial Lecturer, American University, George Washington University
Speaker
Elizabeth Miki Brina is the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Bread Loaf Scholarship and a New York State Summer Writers Institute Scholarship. She currently lives and teaches in New Orleans.
Discussant
Steve Rabson is Professor Emeritus of East Asian Studies, Brown University. He has published books and articles about Okinawa and translations of Okinawan literature. The book Okinawa: Two Postwar Novellas (Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, 1989 reprinted 1996) includes the novella “Cocktail Party” on which the film is loosely based. Other collections of translations are Southern Exposure: Modern Japanese Literature From Okinawa, co-edited with Michael Molasky (University of Hawaii Press, 2000) and Islands of Protest: Japanese Literature From Okinawa, co-edited with Davinder L. Bhowmik (University of Hawaii Press, 2016). The Okinawa Diaspora in Japan: Crossing the Borders Within (University of Hawaii Press, 2014) is a history of Okinawan migration to mainland Japan with interviews and written accounts of residents describing their experiences. Rabson was stationed as a U.S. Army draftee during 1967-68 at a base in Henoko, Okinawa that stored nuclear weapons.
Moderator
Kuniko Ashizawa teaches international relations and serves as Japan Coordinator of Asian Studies Research Council at the School of International Service, American University. From 2005 until 2012, she was a senior lecturer in international relations at Oxford Brookes University in the U.K. Her research interests include Japan’s foreign, security and development assistance policy, U.S.-Japan-China relations, regional institution-building in Asia, and the role of the concept of state identity in foreign policymaking, for which she has published a number of academic journal articles and book chapters, including in International Studies Review, Pacific Affairs, the Pacific Review, and Journal of Peacebuilding and Development. Her book, Japan, the U.S. and Regional Institution-Building in the New Asia: When Identity Matters (Palgrave McMillan, 2013), received the 2015 Masayoshi Ohira Memorial Prize. Ashizawa was a visiting fellow at various research institutions, including the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the East-West Center in Washington, the Reischauer Center for East Asian Studies, SAIS, and the United Nations University (Institute of Advanced Studies) in Tokyo. She received her PhD in international relations at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University.
