Product Description

Mina is the perfect daughter. Bound for Harvard, president of the honor society, straight A student, all while she works at her family’s dry cleaners and helps care for her hearing-impaired little sister. On the outside, Mina does everything right. On the inside, Mina knows the truth. Her life is a lie.

At the height of a heat wave, the summer before her senior year, Mina meets the one person to whom she cannot lie. Ysrael, a young migrant worker who dreams of becoming a musician, comes to work at the dry cleaners and asks Mina the one question that scares her the most. What does she want?

Mina finds herself torn between living her mother’s dreams, caring for her younger sister, grasping the love that Ysrael offers, and the most difficult of all, living a life that is true.

With sensitivity and grace, An Na weaves an intriguing story of a young woman caught in the threads of secrets and lies, struggling for love and finding a voice of her own.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1142213 in Books
• Published on: 2006-06-08
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 240 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780399242755
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From School Library Journal
Grade 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.

From Booklist
*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. Hazel Rochman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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

Customer Reviews

Not Anywhere Near An Na's Previous Book
I thought the book was far too short. Not in the sense of not enough pages to satisfy me, but rather the story was not fleshed out enough.

I really did not like the fact that there were the "Suna" chapters. I thought it could be interesting to have a duo point of view in the story, but it was under-developed. The Asian-American plot of the living up to the mother's dreams was interesting, but dry. It was all "I live a lie! OMG". Teen!Angst.

Suna's hearing aid, I also think, was way under described. I have a brother who is deaf/hard of hearing, so at first I thought this could be interesting. But it was not strong enough to carry, plot or medical-wise. Suna basically was a burden to her mother, and didn't like the aid to show. But wouldn't she be more developmentally challenged because she couldn't pick up every cue? That she would have more trouble in the social arena? An Na seemed to begin to touch it, but then dropped that plot. Suna's hearing problems were not medically described very well, and seemed to be just another angst-problem to add to Mina's life.

The conflicts, like with Jonathan and Ysrael weren't done very well either. I thought everything with Jonathan was too quickly done, and Ysrael/Mina's realtionship was happened FAR too fast.

I loved An Na's book "A Step From Heaven" about Young Ju Park. The writing in this book shows that An Na CAN write well. I was very disapointed to see Mina's story not a poignant as Young Ju's, and not nearly as poetic.

All in all, two-and-a-half stars for this book.

Sort of like a Korean Drama...
This novel wasn't all that great. It's basically about a girl who feels like her life is a "lie," because she's under pressure to get into Harvard. That is, until she meets this guy that shows her to... live for herself. The writing, while clearly intended to be deep and moving, I found appallingly melodramatic. The plot was standard, and it doesn't go very deep into the main character's feelings other than "I think my life is a lie"... that sort of thing.
It does make a point, however-- on how hard Asian-Americans work, what their high expectations are, and how competition with other asian american families works.

beautiful book
After reading An Na's first novel, A Step From Heaven, I felt such a deep connection with everything the author wrote about that I spent weeks searching for another one of her books. I was not disappointed, as Wait for Me was beautifully written, with complex characters and a wonderfully compelling plot. Admittedly, I did find it a bit short, but somehow that only added to its artistry.