Tea with Milk

 Bibliography: Say, A. (1999). Tea with Milk. Houghton Mifflin. ISBN: 978-0-7587-3768-7

Plot Summary: May, a Japanese-American girl, moves with her parent from San Francisco to Japan, her parents homeland.  Though of Japanese heritage, May (now called by her Japanese name, Masako) feels like a foreigner. Her parents try to match her with a young Japanese man, but May, raised in America, has something more nontraditional in mind.  Against her parents wishes, she escapes to the city and finds a job.  Here, she meets Joseph, and they begin a friendship that turns into family as we discover May is the author's mother, and this is her story. 

Critical Analysis: The story is told simply but well, allowing the reader to clearly understand May and her experiences. Say does an excellent job of showing May's feeling of not belonging in a country where, superficially, one would assume she would because she is of Japanese heritage.  Say respectfully shows the traditional role of Japanese women in the mid-twentieth century and how May struggled to fit in because culturally, she identified as an American and felt out of place in Japan. Anyone who has ever felt like they didn't belong can identify with May.  The illustrations serve to enhance the story as people and places are depicted realistically with an almost photographic quality. The characters are authentic, with variation in facial features and no stereotypical representations of Asians. A great story for anyone who has ever felt like they didn't fit in.

Reviews:

HarperCollins Publishers: "With elegant watercolors, Allen Say's beautiful picture book is a moving tribute to his parents and their path to discovering where home really is."

WordPress.com: "A must-do read-aloud."

Awards:

LASC Notable Children's Book, 2000

Notable Books for a Global Society, 2000

Connections:

Ideas borrowed from teachingbooks.net

Use in an elementary or middle school classroom.  Read the book together as a read-aloud and discuss as a class what it means to feel like you belong. Have students write a short narrative about their own experiences in relation, either about a time they felt they did belong, or a time where they felt they didn't. 

Use in a high school Sociology class. Use as a read-aloud and then have a class discussion about concepts such as privilege, power and bias and relate back to the reading. 




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