City of Asylum presents "Finding Home: Elizabeth Miki Brina & Nadia Owusu Live" on April 5.
Tonight two debut novelists read and discuss their newest memoirs: Elizabeth Miki Brina’s debut novel Speak, Okinawa beautifully combs a lifetime of memory, love, loss, the connections that bind us to one another, and is one of the most anticipated memoirs of 2021. A searing, deeply candid story about a young woman’s journey to understand her complicated parents and her own, fraught cultural heritage. Aftershocks is a deeply felt memoir from Whiting Award–winner Nadia Owusu about the push and pull of belonging, the seismic emotional toll of family secrets, and the heart it takes to pull through. Both novelists will discuss their works exploring their common themes of migrations, identity, and feeling out of place, in a live discussion and audience Q&A.The event begins at 7:00 pm and registration is required.
Elizabeth Miki Brina 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. 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. 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.