A teen pretends to be a perfect daughter, but her reality is far darker, in this penetrating look at identity and finding yourself amidst parents’ dreams for you, by Printz Award–winning novelist An Na.
Mina seems like the perfect daughter. Straight A student. Bound for Harvard. Helps out at her family’s dry cleaning store. Takes care of her hearing-impaired little sister. She is her parents’ pride and joy. From the outside, Mina is doing everything right. On the inside, Mina knows the truth. Her perfect-daughter life is a lie. And it isn’t until she meets someone to whom she cannot lie that she’s willing to consider what the truth might mean, and what it will cost. Because Ysrael, the young migrant worker who dreams of becoming a musician and who comes to work for her family, asks Mina the one question that scares her the most: What does she actually want?
Harvard bound, Honor Society president, straight-A student: Mina is the picture perfect daughter. Beneath all the superlatives, though, is an insecure teenager groping for her real identity. Told through the words of its Korean-American protagonist, An Na's Wait for Me captures the intensity of adolescent experience without false dramatization or sentimentality.
Publishers Weekly
Guest gives a sensitive, nuanced performance as Mina, the Korean-American teenager who resorts to lying and doctoring her report cards to live up to the expectations of her mother, whose dream is for Mina to attend Harvard. This spot-on reading conveys Mina's conflicting emotions: fear of being caught in her deception, guilt at knowing that her mother worked hard and sacrificed to give her opportunities, resentment at all the pressure her mother puts on her, and most of all, a deep-seated longing to break free and live her own life. Additionally, Guest is wonderful in the role of the mother, with her heavy Korean accent and bossy nature, and also Suna, Mina's childlike, hearing-impaired younger sister. Children of immigrants will find a kindred spirit in Mina, while most young listeners will relate to the eternal teenage conflict: trying to please parents while finding one's own identity. Ages 12-up. (June) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
VOYA - Leslie Carter
Initially appearing to be another book about the constant battle between a mother and her teenage daughter, this one grows into a girl's struggle for her personal survival and for her understanding of love. Born into a Korean American family in a suburb of Los Angeles, Mina wearies over her mother's constant nagging about grades, SAT preparation, and Harvard. She knows that her grades have fallen because of her problems with math, but her mother's expectations will not allow for any failure or any goal short of being the best. Mina's solution to her battle with her mother is to lie and tell her that everything is fine. She also begins taking money from the till in her parents' dry cleaning shop with the idea of leaving home at the end of her senior year. When Ysreal is hired to help in the shop, Mina slowly begins to discover that she has found a soul mate. She opens her heart to him, and he wisely encourages her to tell her mother the truth. When he leaves for music school in San Francisco, Mina almost goes with him, but her love for her family draws her back to finally deal with everything that has pulled them apart. Although Mina's mother begins as a one-dimensional character, she becomes much more faceted when her background is revealed. Readers will immediately identify with Mina and her struggles at home. This book will especially resonate with girls who feel under too much pressure to excel.
Children's Literature - Cynthia Hopp
Mina tries her hardest to be the best possible child and student for her mother, but this means lying about her grades and covering up her misdeeds of stealing. During the summer before her senior year, everything seems to fall apart for Mina. She has to face all of her lies, and in the process, she finds herself falling in love with Ysrael, a young migrant worker who has come to help her parents run their business. Since Mina's mother only wants the best for her child, she forbids her to date until Mina graduates from high school and goes on to Harvard. Now Mina must face her skeletons, make her mother come to terms with her own skeletons, and decide how to choose between her sister, whom she protects, and her new love before summer ends. Mina comes to realize that she can only do so much before everything starts to crumble. An Na shows the true struggle of an adolescent with controlling parents who faces realistic problems. Mina is Asian-American, and as she negotiate the gaps between her two cultures, readers gain insight into cultural practices surrounding essentials such as child-rearing practices, money, and tradition.
VOYA
Mina's mother has her life planned out for her. After Mina graduates at the top of her class, she will leave the family's laundromat in California and attend Harvard. Mina, a seventeen-year-old Korean American, does not have the high grades that her mother thinks she does. Mina has doctored her report card with the help of Jonathon Kim, the son of a wealthy friend of the family. She does, however, have a plan: She has been stealing small amounts of cash from the register when she does the nightly receipts, and she intends to run away and live on her own after graduation. She feels responsible, however, for supporting her younger half-sister Suna, whom her mother treats poorly. While struggling to decide what she can do with her life, pretending to study for the SAT, and fending off Jonathon's amorous advances, Mina must hide her developing relationship with Ysrael, a Mexican teen who has come to work in their shop while Mina's stepfather recovers from a strained back. Events come to a head when the missing money is discovered. Ysrael is blamed and leaves for music school in San Francisco, and Mina finally stands up to her mother. This Printz award-winning author crafts a difficult book about a girl in a difficult situation. Mina and her sister share the telling of their story. Mina's chapters are in first person, and Suna's are in third. The flipping back and forth creates a distance from both characters. Mina is not particularly sympathetic. The convention of using quotation marks only when English is spoken makes it tough to distinguish Mina's thoughts from conversations in Korean where no quotes are used. Some teens might see themselves in Mina's struggle to free herself from hermother's control, but most will not bother struggling through the flowery language or the slow-moving story. VOYA CODES: 3Q 3P S (Readable without serious defects; Will appeal with pushing; Senior High, defined as grades 10 to 12). 2006, G.P. Putnam's Sons, 176p., Ages 15 to 18.
Timothy Capehart
Jennifer Hanni
Creating a dream-like state through language and point of view in Wait for Me, An Na tells the story of a Korean-American girl searching for her own dreams, while trying to live up to her mother's high aspirations of a Harvard education. While some of the language and situations may be culturally specific, all readers will connect with the fear, anger, desperation, passion, and struggle with parents Mina feels, as well as fall in love with Ysrael, the boy who flips her tormented world upside down, forcing her to decide exactly what she, and not her mother, wants. Wait for Me's chapters switch focus between the protagonist, older sister Mina, and her younger hearing-impaired sister Suna. Mina's chapters are written in first person, while Suna's are written in third person, creating an interesting dynamic of voice and point of view. This point of view floats readers outside reality into a world where truth, reality, and fantasy intertwine.
School Library Journal
Gr 8 Up-Mina has a lot to cope with during the summer before her senior year in high school in this novel by An Na (Putnam, 2006). Her Korean-American family needs her help in their small dry cleaning business, her hearing-impaired younger sister depends on her for the nurturing their mother doesn't offer, and she's getting unwanted physical attention from a longtime family friend. But most of all, Mina has promulgated some whopping lies about her academic prowess that has put her in several tight spots. She's led her mother to believe that she's head of the Honor Society and en route to Harvard when, in fact, Jonathan, a family friend, has covered for her and taught her about stealing from the family's business. Complicating matters is Mina's new love interest, Ysrael, a young man from Mexico who comes to work at the family's dry cleaners, who urges her to follow her dreams-and him. Kim Mai Guest provides compelling narration. This story is compact, highly textured, and sure to engage listeners.-Francisca Goldsmith, Berkley Public Library, CA Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
What defines success? For one immigrant Korean mother, it is nothing less than a Harvard education. Seventeen-year-old Mina has created a high-school life filled with the illusion of straight A's and a topnotch college preparatory program in order to meet the overwhelming demands and expectations of her controlling Uhmma. Aided by former boyfriend and fellow Korean Jonathan, Mina adds some cheating to her life of lying. Her younger, hearing-impaired sister Suna, viewed as "damaged" by Uhmma, and the forbidden love and realistic advice of new, Mexican boyfriend Ysrael, ultimately force a sense of accountability in Mina. In an open-ended and arresting conclusion, she begins to face the truth within herself. Once again Na has created a compelling drama riveted with emotional anguish. She draws her characters completely from within their souls, expressing the dreaded fear and doubt of protagonist Mina, which is brought on by the harshness and overbearing parental presumptions of Uhmma, and complicated by the loving responsibility for neglected and virtually abandoned sister, Suna. For Mina, success will depend on how she confronts her own desires, voices them to her rigid, insufferable mother and begins to live an honest life for herself. Gripping and engrossing. (Fiction. YA)
From the Publisher
She draws her characters completely from within their souls. . . .Gripping and engrossing. (Kirkus Reviews, starred review)
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