Takei and his team did a fantastic job with this book. I have to admit that I really didn't know much about the Japanese internment camps before this book. Truthfully, I didn't even know they had existed until families were being separated and detained at the Mexico border. This book was written with education on the events being the driving factor and it does this beautifully. He talks about the impact that he saw on his parents vs the impact on he and his siblings. I feel like this should be a must read for everyone.
As the biography of an extremely famous actor person, I will note that George Takei is the subject of a rape accusation so while it does cover a very important part of America's history I would certainly not say it's a must read.
Co-writer Justin Eisinger was born in Akron Ohio and now lives in San Diego California and besides writing graphic novels and tv episodes apparently publishes North America's only inline skating magazine? And one of the only things that I could find out about Steven Scott is that he also wrote How to Use the Law of Attraction to Win Contests, at least according to Goodreads.
The art by Harmony Becker is very well done. Pleasant to look at and easily expressing what is happening in a way that takes more skill then necessarily it looks like. Despite being from Columbus Ohio, which may be one of my …
As the biography of an extremely famous actor person, I will note that George Takei is the subject of a rape accusation so while it does cover a very important part of America's history I would certainly not say it's a must read.
Co-writer Justin Eisinger was born in Akron Ohio and now lives in San Diego California and besides writing graphic novels and tv episodes apparently publishes North America's only inline skating magazine? And one of the only things that I could find out about Steven Scott is that he also wrote How to Use the Law of Attraction to Win Contests, at least according to Goodreads.
The art by Harmony Becker is very well done. Pleasant to look at and easily expressing what is happening in a way that takes more skill then necessarily it looks like. Despite being from Columbus Ohio, which may be one of my least favourite parts of the USA, Harmony Becker is also the author of two web comics named Anemone and Catharus and Himawari Share.
Flipping over the book, as we do, the book is described thusly: George Takei has captured hearts and minds worldwide with his captivating stage presence and outspoken commitment to equal rights. But long before he braved new frontiers in Star Trek, he woke up as a four-year-old boy to find his own birth country at war with his father's -- and their entire family forced from their home into an uncertain future.
In 1942, at the order of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, every person of Japanese descent on the west coast was rounded up and shipped to one of ten "relocation centers," hundreds or thousands of miles from home, where they would be held for years under armed guard.
They Called Us Enemy is Takei's firsthand account of those years behind barbed wire, the joys and terrors of growing up under legalized racism, his mother's hard choices, his father's faith in democracy, and the way those experiences planted the seeds for his astonishing future.
What is American? Who gets to decide? When the world is against you, what can one person do? To answer these questions, George Takei joins co-writers Justin Eisinger & Steven Scott and artist Harmony Becker for the journey of a lifetime.
How were gender and sexuality treated in the book? While it's certainly not the focus of the book, they did not just gloss over the fact that Takei is in fact a married gay man. And while it's not breaking any new ground in the world of gender, both of Takei's parents are both fully fleshed out human beings who are brave and smart and all that jazz.
Race is an obvious focus, class a bit but not much. While Takei definitely comes across as more liberal then anything else, since this book was written post Obama there was no "end of history" like narrative that has not aged well with March and the book does acknowledge the parallels to today.
Overall I would rate this a million times better then Gaijin: American Prisoner of War, which I do not recommend, because it was horrible.
