Ana V.

Learning, remembering, forgetting. That is how we find out who we are.

Kim, a sixteen year old Japanese-American starts on a quest to find her father's family, in order to know who she is and if she has anyone left that she could call relatives. For years now, she has been living with the burden that her physical appearance gives her in the eyes of other people - you can immediately see she has Japanese heritage and for that reason, she thinks, nobody really wants to get close to her, for she is way too different to be handled.

Even though she has an amazing family, a loving mother, a funny and lovable stepfather and the best half-brother in the world, she thinks she's just half of everything: she's half-adopted, half-Japanese, half-American, she's a half-sister.. She just wants to be whole again, to truly be something from beginning to end.

That is way, after some planning, she leaves for Sacramento, the town in which her father used to live. Kenji Yogushi is not alive anymore, but his family might be, and that's what she hopes - to find someone she can relate to, to find them and hope to be loved back as much as she wants to love them.

I think this is a cute story, an easy read, and I was able to relate to it in many, many ways. But that's just me. For others, this may be just a read, but one with meaning, that would maybe fill an evening with pleasant thoughts about who we are, where we come from and what we have done.