Date of Award
5-2018
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
M.F.A.
Degree Program
Creative Writing
Department
English
Major Professor
Randolph Bates
Second Advisor
Richard Goodman
Third Advisor
Erik Hansen
Abstract
A memoir that focuses on the complications of growing as the only daughter of a mother from Okinawa and a father from the United States. They met at a nightclub, where her mother worked as a waitress, outside an Army base, where her father was stationed during U.S. Military occupation of the island. These marriages between Okinawan women and U.S. Servicemen have been quite common since 1945, after the Battle of Okinawa, when a massive complex of bases was first established. Okinawan women must leave their homes and their families to follow their husbands to the United States, where they are faced with challenges of racism, language barriers and isolation. Their children often grow up rejecting and resenting their Okinawan identities, causing further alienation.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Brina, Elizabeth, "Not Japanese" (2018). University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations. 2443.
https://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/2443
Rights
The University of New Orleans and its agents retain the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible this dissertation or thesis in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. The author retains all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis or dissertation.