Wait for Meby An Na
Publishers Weekly
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The summer before her senior year, Mina's web of lies begins to unravel. She has led her mother to believe that she is president of the honor society and headed for Harvard, yet she can barely maintain her average grades. Fellow Korean-American classmate Jonathon Kim, her mother's idea of perfection, has been helping Mina in her deception. After a single sexual encounter with Jonathon, Mina realizes she is paying a high price for her charade. When Mexican teen Ysrael comes to work at their dry-cleaning store, Mina immediately feels drawn to him. Finally Mina has found someone with whom she can be completely honest. Ysrael encourages Mina to leave El Cajon and all of her mother's expectations to start a new life with him in San Francisco. When Mina's mother fires Ysrael for something Mina has done, she must choose between her own desires and the responsibility she feels to her family. The drama unfolds in chapters that alternate between the points of view of Mina and her hearing-impaired younger sister, Suna. Mina's first-person voice convincingly describes the impact of the secrets she guards, while the use of a third-person perspective in Suna's chapters underscores the distance their mother keeps from her handicapped daughter. Several secondary themes detract from the main thread of Mina's story, yet Na (A Step from Heaven) delivers a powerful novel about the pressures of parental expectations and how secrets can tear a family apart. Ages 12-up. (June) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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School Library Journal
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Gr 8 Up–The pack of lies about her academic achievement that Mina has told to satisfy her mother's high expectations (she has her heart set on her daughter going to Harvard) is unraveling as her senior year approaches. Jonathon Kim, a Stanford-bound teen and the son of her mother's best friend, has helped with the deception by forging Mina's report cards and backing up her many fictions. He asks too much of her, though, while Ysrael, the attractive new employee in the family cleaning business, encourages her to follow her own dreams–and him–to San Francisco. The tension in this Korean-American family is as uncomfortable as the heat and Santa Ana winds of the southern California setting. Mina's mother's bitterness over her lot in life and her neglect of Mina's hearing-impaired younger sister, Suna, have left the teen responsible. The story is told in two voices: first-person past tense for Mina and a distancing third-person present for Suna, just entering middle school and just beginning to find her own voice. The book is carefully crafted and beautifully written; even the punctuation emphasizes the fact that this is the younger generation's story. The adults speak without quotation marks. Na plays with her readers, suggesting in the prologue that the resolution of this story will come with a car crash, but instead makes Mina's decision about her future a logical outcome of her emotional growth. Accessible and wonderfully discussable, this story of family secrets and family love is a worthy successor to Na's A Step from Heaven (Front St, 2001).–Kathleen Isaacs, Towson University, MD Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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BookList
: From BookList, March 15, 2006, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission. : *Starred Review* : Gr. 8-11. The author of the Printz Award Book A Step from Heaven (2001) tells another contemporary Korean American story of leaving home. This time, though, love is as powerful as the intense family drama. The focus is on high-school-senior Mina, trapped in the web of lies invented to satisfy her overbearing mom, Uhmma, who expects Mina to attend Harvard and escape the drudgery of their small-town dry-cleaning store. Mina's brilliant friend, Jonathan Kim, helps her cheat and steal. She uses him, but he thinks he loves her--and he eventually rapes her. Then Mexican immigrant Ysrael, a gifted musician on his way to San Francisco, comes to work in the store, and he and Mina fall passionately in love. Will she go with him and make a new life free of lies? Ysrael is too perfect, just as Uhmma is demonized, but both are shown from Mina's viewpoint, and it is her struggle with her secrets that is spellbinding. Alternating with Mina's first-person narrative are short vignettes from the perspective of Mina's deaf younger sister, who Mina protects. The conflicts of love, loyalty, and betrayal are the heart of the story--and they eventually show Mina her way.
HazelRochman. : | distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.: |
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