#VelshiBannedBookClub: George Takei’s ‘They Called Us Enemy’
10:15
Share this -
copied
George Takei’s “They Called Us Enemy” is a powerfully crafted graphic novel about finding strength in pain – using the clear language and expressive, comic-book style drawings of a children’s book to tell a very adult story. In response to the deadly strike on Pearl Harbor in 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 – systemically stripping Japanese Americans of their civil rights, their homes, their property, and their dignity. 120,000 Japanese Americans, including the Takei family, were forced into barbed wire-lined concentration camps across the nation simply for having Japanese heritage. The book moves effortlessly between the naivete of a young boy in the internment camps and the more complex and darker reflections of older Takei today. While “They Called Us Enemy” is a poignant memoir and commemoration of this brutal time in America’s not-so-distant past -- it also honors heritage, community, and family. May 13, 2023
UP NEXT
Trump prepares for critical day in hush money hearing and $464 million bond deadline
08:01
For Facts Sake: Crime is down in the U.S., don’t let Trump anyone tell you differently
03:44
Peter Beinart: U.S. leadership should be focused on U.S. policy, not Israeli elections
08:45
Marwan Barghouti: the future leader of Palestine?
03:46
Re-reading George Orwell’s ‘1984’
13:56
David Miliband: Gaza famine a ‘failure of humanity’