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Anna Armstrong Memoir

806 Words4 Pages

“Memphis, Virginia, Japan…” The list goes on and on as Anna Armstrong names all the places where she has lived. We’re sitting at a small square table in Pimento’s, waiting for our food. As we wait, she regales me with tales from her childhood. Anna did not have a typical upbringing. Her father is in the Navy, so her family moved around a lot as she was growing up. In her 19 years, Anna has moved to 17 different places, usually staying in each for no more than a couple years. The longest period she had lived in a single place was during middle school: 3 years in Japan. Despite the thrill of traveling to different places and living abroad, military life was difficult for Anna. Frequent moving meant that Anna didn’t have much time to develop and maintain close connections with fellow students her age, and the friends she did make she would soon have to leave behind.
Anna recalled one particularly vivid memory of the summer prior to moving to Japan: “I was at this summer camp, but the only person I knew was my older cousin, so I just followed her around all day. My cousin and I were close, so I remember being …show more content…

The works of C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Jane Austen were especially formative and influential during her middle school and early high school years. In March of 2011, Anna’s family relocated to Virginia from a military base in Japan after an earthquake. Her fellow students there had had high expectations and many questions for her; simply because she moved from Japan, they expected her to look Asian, speak Japanese, and to excel in practically everything. In addition, many of the students had already solidified their friend groups or made cliques, which created issues with Anna making friends. “I despised Virginia, so I depended on books instead,” she

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