Wait for Me

by An Na

Overview

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?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781481442442
Publisher:	Atheneum/Caitlyn Dlouhy Books
Publication date:	09/12/2017
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	224
File size:	2 MB
Age Range:	12 - 18 Years

About the Author

An Na was born in Korea and grew up in San Diego, California. A former middle school English and history teacher, she is the critically acclaimed author of The Fold, Wait for Me, the National Book Award finalist and Printz Award–winning novel A Step from Heaven, and The Place Between Breaths. She lives in Vermont.

Read an Excerpt

prologue

She walks alone in the rain. The faded pink pajama bottoms and oversized T-shirt clinging to her small frame, heavy with the weight of water. Her breath breaks inside her chest in an upward heave that strangles a cry escaping from her throat. Gulps of air. Her shoulders rising and falling. How much time has passed? She presses the heel of her hand against the tears that blur her vision. Though her chest still throbs, demanding air, she begins to run again. Looks down at her feet and urges them to fly faster, skim across the pavement.

The city, a dusty camouflage of grays punctuated with dots of colors from traffic lights and swirling neon signs, stretches awake in the early-morning drizzle. In the distance there is the slam of metal gates being pushed aside, revealing cluttered storefronts and display windows. The heartbeat of the city thickens with the heat of summer rising as steam from the streets, with the noise of cars speeding across the freeway, with the multitude of voices and languages rising up to greet each other. The day begins, yet all Suna can see is the memory of a face framed by night. A face so familiar, so loved, she can name each imperfection, each mark as though they are her own.

Suna runs forward without a glance, without a thought. To the car rounding the curve of the freeway off-ramp. The road slick with oil and rain. She pumps her arms and wills herself into the light.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

She draws her characters completely from within their souls. . . .Gripping and engrossing. (Kirkus Reviews, starred review)

Interviews

When did you start writing?

I started thinking about writing for children after I had finished college and was teaching full time. However, it wasn't until I entered my MFA program that the real writing began.

What made you decide to write this book?

It started with a very visual image of Mina and Ysrael on the hood of the car looking out over the sunset. While the image of the two lovers was familiar what caught my attention was the thought of the younger sister, Suna, inside the car watching her older sister fall in love.

What would you like young readers to learn from Mina?

To know and believe in yourself.

Are any of the characters in Wait for Me? based on anyone in your "real" life?

Some of the characters are composites from many different people, both real and fictional.

What adjectives would you use to describe Wait for Me?

Tender, loving.

Who are some of your favorite authors?

Ian McEwan, Sylvia Plath, Jacqueline Woodson, Kazuo Ishiguro, Lorrie Moore, Lois Lowry

Have you started working on your next book? Can you give us a sneak peak?

I'm currently at work on my third novel, but I don't like to talk about it until it's completely done.

Is there anything else you'd like to tell readers?

Thank you for listening to my stories.

Editorial Reviews

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.

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.

Publishers Weekly

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.

School Library Journal

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)

Kirkus Reviews

She draws her characters completely from within their souls. . . .Gripping and engrossing. (Kirkus Reviews, starred review)

From the Publisher