They Called Us Enemy

Former Star Trek actor George Takei wrote this graphic memoir about his family's experience being deported to an internment camp for Japanese Americans in the 1940s. Takei lived in two camps between the ages of four and eight. The story covers the moment the police knocked on his door to pick them up until they were released.

Takei is just four when his father wakes him and his younger brother up and tells them to get dressed quickly and wait for him in the living room. They board a bus, then train to their ultimate destination, the Rohwer Camp in Arkansas.  They initially spend time living in a horse stall at the Santa Anita Racetrack before being herded onto a train eastward to Arkansas. The author actually began kindergarten at Santa Anita. Takei felt it all was an adventure, as did the other kids who were traveling with their families.

The California Attorney General, Earl Warren, decided to follow the popular politics of the day to "lock up the Japs," as a way to become Governor. He succeeded (and later became Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court) by stating that the lack of evidence against the Japanese Americans was actually evidence because they were inscrutable. They were "nonassimilable" and therefore "alien enemies."  Note that before the Pearl Harbor attack a person born in Japan could not become an American citizen. These arguments seemed cruel because if an immigrant is prohibited by law from becoming a citizen their hands were tied if a war broke out with their homeland. In the time period between the attack and the beginning of the internment the Japanese Americans were forced to sell their possessions at a a fraction of their value because the U. S. government froze their bank accounts and financial assets.

The family was only allowed to take what they could carry with them to the camp. They were forced to leave behind a two story home in Los Angeles and all of their possessions. They lived at Rohwer until the author's parents were designated "no-nos."  A "no-no" is a person who answered "no" to questions 27 and 28 on a mandatory questionnaire that was distributed to all of the prisoners at the camps. Most of the questions concerned relatives in Japan, criminal records, membership in organizations, foreign investments and magazine reading habits. Question 27 was "are you willing to serve in the armed forces on combat duty," and question 28 was "will you swear unqualified allegiance to the United States..." The Japanese were outraged at the loyalty questions, particularly 28. 28 rested on the false premise that they had a racial allegiance to the emporer of Japan. Answering yes to this question meant that they had a loyalty to give up. The Takei family was then sent to one of the other ten internment camps, Tule Lake in Northern California. Tule Lake housed the most disloyal people and had tanks and three barbed wires around the camp to "protect" them.

This story was told well. It alternated between the 1940s and the present time period with the author speaking as a senior citizen about his internment. The detailed black and white drawings were done by Harmony Becker.  She advanced the story with her portraiture of the adults showing their emotions on their faces. With the kids being kids and finding fun everywhere, the seriousness of the internment is shown on the adults' faces and in their postures.

Takei correlates his experience with that of today's migrant children being kept in cages at our southern border. He has said in interviews that he understands how those children feel because he grew up isolated behind barbed wire. When Takei saw the pictures on TV of children being held in cages the old outrage he once felt reemerged. He decided to use a medium for telling his story that most of us first experienced as children-comic books-to help readers see it through the eyes of the child he once was.  I thought this was a brilliant idea.

I learned a few new facts about this part of American history and can see that it was close to being repeated with the Muslim ban and anti-immigration stance we have recently debated nationally. Takei's story is timely.

Highly recommended!

I Was Their American Dream

This graphic memoir by Malaka Gharib is a lovely autobiography covering the author's birth through her recent marriage. Gharib is a first generation American of Filipino Egyptian ancestry whose parents invested their lives in their children in pursuit of the American dream.

Growing up in Cerritos, California Gharib only knew other immigrant children. It was normal to ask her peers "what are you." Everyone talked about their heritage openly.  It was expected. Her family, however, were stuck in their country of origin, only serving ethnic foods at home and continued to follow the customs of the Philippines where Gharib's mother and siblings emigrated from. Her father was an Egyptian who returned there after divorcing Gharib's mother. Gharib then spent every summer in Egypt and picked up many of the attributes of the Egyptians.

When the author turned 16 she suddenly had a bunch of feelings about white people. She wanted to be white and have everything they had. Since she had not mentioned white people until the midway point, I was taken aback by her statements about them. Where did these ideas come from?  What made her think she had less? I did not think she had less. When it was time for college and a career she chose "white" schools and cities to live in. I was confused as most of the book heralded her ethnic origins. I heralded them along with her. I just didn't understand her choices when she became an adult. They contrasted with what I thought was a love of heritage.

The artwork style is primitive. It looks like a child created the drawings. The story is told well. The reader can feel Gharib's emotions as she tells each part of her life story. In addition, the way that she introduced her many family members was brilliant because it is difficult for readers to remember alot of characters. I had no problem getting to know every member of her extended family and remembering each person's idiosyncrasies. I enjoyed meeting her friends and classmates too.  All of these characters were memorable.

The author ended her book with a lifestyle that is more American than ethnic. I don't know what to think about that. Is it just the norm for first generation Americans to assimilate into society or is Gharib embarrassed by her ethnicity?

I loved this book. It is thought provoking concerning how to handle this thing called the American experience.  It should be required reading for all of us.

Japanese Notebooks

Japanese Notebooks:  A Journey to the Empire of Signs is a graphic memoir by Igort, an Italian comics creator, who has traveled to Japan twenty times, lived there for a time and worked in its manga industry for ten years. It's a testament to his life long love affair with Japan. Igort shows how he learned to live and work in Japan, found inspiration from the cultural activities he participated in, as well as how the comics industry operates there.

This is a beautifully illustrated book.  Most of the drawings have been done in color and show the author immersing himself in Japanese culture and life. When he arrives in Tokyo he must adjust to living in the tiny 150 square foot apartment that he was given to live in. He then has a three and a half hour job interview.  Later he realizes that in Japan the interviewee should be the first person to stand up, signaling the end of the interview. In the west it's the opposite.  The Japanese thought that he was trying to negotiate a higher salary by not standing up and ending the interview. In his free time Igort visited Buddhist temples, gardens, tea shops, a sumo wrestling training place, and book stores. He discussed with his Japanese co-workers the samurai code, films, literature and manga, all subjects that he illustrated in his book. Toward the end Igort draws a memorial to several manga masters who have passed away.

The author wrote so lovingly about Japan that it captivated me too.  He makes the reader want to jump on a plane and visit the country at length. If that's not possible, there is this armchair traveler book called Japanese Notebooks.

Highly recommended!

Irmina

Irmina is the author's grandmother. She found a group of diaries and letters belonging to her late grandmother and pieced together this history, then created a graphic memoir of her grandmother's life.  The author was surprised to find how she changed radically from someone who asked many questions to a person who looked the other way. I was unaware of where this memoir would take me when I picked it up and was disturbed by the decisions Irmina made in her life. However, I did feel that she had no good choices to make until I read the Afterward concerning the Nazi experience for ordinary Germans.

In the opening of the book Irmina has just arrived in London from her native Germany to attend a school for foreign language secretaries. She excels at school but is aloof at the parties that she is invited to.  At one party she meets a black man from Barbados, Howard Green, who is  attending Oxford University. They become good friends and spend every possible moment together, despite the ugly looks they receive in public.  Howard is used to dealing with discrimination but Irmina is not.  However, Irmina herself has to deal with discrimination as her fellow students call her a Nazi in class and her English hosts call the Germans animals when discussing the war. Irmina is determined to stay in London after finishing school as that is where there are more opportunities for working women. When her family can no longer send her money she decides that she must return to Germany.

The only job Irmina can find in Germany is through a family friend.  She lands a job at the Ministry of War. She thinks that she can get a transfer to the London office but when that falls through Irmina marries Gregor Meinrich and has a child. Her husband is an architect who works for Goebbels but several years after their marriage Gregor tells Irmina that he is an SS Officer. Irmina is bored and wants to get a job but is told that they must present a united front so that Gregor can advance in his job. She agrees as Gregor is on the verge of getting a big contract from Goebbels. The contract never materializes and Gregor is gone from home often on SS duties. As architecture takes a back seat to the war, Gregor takes a military post to the eastern front where he is killed.

When I finished reading this book I felt sad for Irmina. She was never happy with her life. It seemed that she was always at the point of receiving something great in life but then having it disappear before  her eyes. While after the war she had a long career in school administration, the author does not show that she was happy with it.  Irmina was shown as someone that students were afraid of.  Her reunion with Howard at the conclusion of the book was unfulfilling for her.  He had moved on with his life but had not. It was sad.

The Afterward written by Dr. Alexander Korb explained Irmina's life. She made the same decisions German women of that era made.  She changed in the same way ordinary Germans changed as the Nazis came to power and then took over the country.  I had to reread the book after finishing the Afterward as I had missed many clues into Irmina's psyche.

Dr. Korb explained that the subject of the coexistence of terror and living everyday life, such as Irmina had to deal with, is still being examined today.  The Nazi's concept of Volksgemeinschaft, a promise of a better society for the common good, was not accepted by society at large.  Irmina did not feel obligated to make any sacrifices for what is supposed to be the common good as she only contributed to the "voluntary" Winter Relief when it was deducted from her paycheck.  She repeatedly asked close friends what Volksgemeinschaft could do for her.  In contrast, she was deemed to be an ethnic comrade who belonged in Germany by providing proof of her ancestry in order to get the job in the Ministry of War.  She didn't think twice about it.  The fact that she had no empathy for those who were persecuted by the regime actually facilitated her path into German society.  She never questioned the regime and accepted its benefits without reflection.  She attempted to position herself and her family to their best advantage although she did not participate in the enrichment of herself at the expense of the deported and murdered Jews.  Dr. Korb felt that this decision of hers was not due to her inner distance from events but due more to her social background, not wanting to lower herself to the level of the street.  I thought that this was an interesting comment as throughout the book Irmina had this inner distance from events that she did not like.

The matter of whether ordinary Germans were aware of the genocide of Jews is easy to answer.  Dr. Korb explains that every German citizen could know that it was happening.  This was a matter of having knowledge and suppressing knowledge.  The deportation of the Jews was visible.  When German citizens stated after the war that they did not know what was going on, it was an attempt to not be held accountable.  Hundreds of thousands of Germans in occupied territories in the east came in contact with the mass murder and there were widespread rumors about the Jewish genocide.  It was well known that when Jews were deported that they would not be returning. Irmina, who once shopped in a Jewish department store, shopped elsewhere and threatened to report a relative for discussing the gassing of the Jews.  She basically strengthened the Nazi propaganda by threatening her relative.

Irmina's life was tragic. Of course, not as tragic as others during this era.  The author was courageous to write about her grandmother's life. I doubt that I would publicly air the family skeletons. She did a fabulous job in telling this story and the Afterward was essential in explaining Irmina's decisions.

Irmina is a must read!

Drawn to Berlin

Drawn to Berlin is Ali Fitzgerald's memoir of teaching comic workshops in refugee shelters in Germany during 2015 and 2016. She is an American living in Berlin and many of the refugees are from Syria.  They have come to Europe in huge numbers seeking asylum. The story takes place at The Bubble, a refugee center in northern Berlin.

The refugees featured in the book surprisingly did not draw violent images from their former lives in Syria.  Instead they chose friendly subjects such as flowers and ships. Her discussions with them were different, though.  They were painfully sad. All had left loved ones behind and could not get in touch with them. Without the right papers, the German government will not allow them to obtain housing or jobs so they were stuck in the shelters unable to move forward for months or even years. While the Germans were welcoming initially, nationalism begins to rise in response to their fear of losing their culture.

The story is told in black and white  drawings.  They are not done in a style that I like but the since the story had depth it didn't bother me that much.

The historical connection between today and immigrants from 100 years ago as well as between Germany today and a century ago was interesting. A century ago Jewish refugees from pogroms in Russia came to Germany and had trouble getting settled. Also, a font that the Nazis used when writing their propaganda, called fraktur, had a renaissance after the Syrian refugees arrived. This font was never supposed to be used again after the end of World War II but nationalism has caused it to reappear. The author discussed several other connections between the present and the past that were fascinating.

Drawn to Berlin tells an important story in history.  While I had read news stories about these refugees in Germany, I never read anything from the refugees' perspective.  The author did a great job of presenting their story.

A Fire Story

Brian Fies wrote this graphic  memoir of his family's experience losing their home to the California wildfires in October 2017.  The fires destroyed over 6,200 homes and killed 44 people.  Fellow artists sent him art supplies and he began a comic while the fires were still burning.  He posted the comic on his blog and it went viral.  It was featured on CNN and in The Washington Post.

Fies' wife Karen woke up at 1:30 a.m. on October 9, 2017 smelling smoke and thought that it was a fire in Calistoga, twenty miles away.  When she looked out the window and saw a glowing sky they both jumped into action and packed what they thought were their most treasured possessions and left, thinking though that they would be returning to their home.  They found out later that their home of twenty years was gone an hour after they left. The Fies traveled to Karen's office to stay for a few days as she held a job in emergency management and, as such, had a small apartment.  Later they traveled to their adult twin daughters' home to stay and began a two year process of rebuilding their lives.

The book also tells the story of five other individuals but the Fies' story continues to be told throughout the book.  While the artwork in the book is light due to its color scheme the heart wrenching emotions of going through this type of experience is evident. Fies chose his words carefully in telling his story.  He also used a fluorescent palette in the novel which was reminiscent of the highlighters that he originally used in his comic. Each color is used in various shades which I found to be attractive.

If it is possible to do justice on telling a story about a catastrophic fire in graphic novel format, this is it. The poignancy of the words written were perfect to recreate the emotions that he felt as he relived each part of his story.  I was touched by it, never understanding before how losing everything you own in a fire changes a person.  This is a must read.

Kid Gloves

Kid Gloves: Nine Months of Careful Chaos is Lucy Knisley's 6th graphic novel. It details her experience trying to conceive a child, her eventual pregnancy and the life threatening delivery of her baby. It has been written with low key humor. Kid Gloves was published in February, 2019.

Lucy begins this graphic memoir with her first introduction to contraceptives when she was a teenager.  She volunteered for Planned Parenthood's Peer-to-Peer Educator Program. She was trained about sexual health and contraceptives and then informed her classmates about what she learned and passed out condoms and pamphlets. She quickly notes that when she became an adult she realized how little information she received. Her attempts to use a diaphragm, the pill and an IUD had terrible side effects which required her to have surgery.

After she and her husband decided to have a child they thought conceiving would be easy. It was. However, Lucy had several miscarriages and found out one in four pregnancies is miscarried. She wondered why the Planned Parenthood classes didn't give this information.

She fell into grief after each miscarriage and could not work. Her female friends and acquaintances all told  her every old wives tale about pregnancy and miscarriage which she dutifully covered in a section called Miscarriage Myths.

Finally Lucy had a successful pregnancy that was fraught with nausea, insomnia and undiagnosed eclampsia which resulted in an emergency Caesarean and 2 days of unconsciousness. However, she got the baby she wanted. Still, she is wondering why she was not taught about all of these possibilities of pregnancy when she was a teenager.

I thought the author chose a clever theme, sex education, for her story.  Using her high school sex ed classes through Planned Parenthood was a brilliant backdrop for her own experience. In addition, while this story was about a serious topic it was told with humor. The humor was low key probably because of the subject matter. Also, the reader could feel the emotions of the author through each stage of her pregnancy experience. The emotions were both written and drawn on her many  facial expressions and those of her husband.

I learned a few things too.  I did not know that one in four pregnancies are miscarried. The author discusses many misconceptions about the entire maternity process that I would recommend the book to a newly pregnant woman. There is much to learn here if you didn't have a great sex education as a youth.

The artwork was done in line drawings primarily in a comic strip format. Bright colors are used throughout the book except for the two day period of time when the author was unconscious after the delivery of her baby. Here, she uses black and white drawings and the writing is from the point of view of her husband.

Kid Gloves was a quick read. I loved it and read it again the day after I finished it. It is informative but in a funny way. I love the use of bright colors and perhaps they bring some lightness to this serious book. I borrowed this book from my public library but feel that it belongs in my graphic novel collection. I will probably buy it.

5 out of 5 stars!

The Arab of the Future 3

Riad Sattouf has recently published part 3 of his series about growing up in the Middle East. It only covers 2 years of his life; from 1985 through 1987. Riad has a French Christian mother, Clementine, and a Lebanese father who teaches at a Syrian university. Together with his younger brother Yahya they live in the countryside village of Ter Maaleh where there are many deprivations of life. The power frequently goes out, there are no traditional grocery stores and many foods are scarce.

Riad is now 7 and continues to struggle with fitting in. Because he is blonde like his mother Riad is frequently accused of being Jewish. He and his best friend Saleem are star pupils and are never in trouble with the teacher. However, they incur the wrath of other students who regularly get caned by the teacher. They still manage to have a good time in an increasingly cruel society run by Bashir Al-Asad. His parents frequently fight as Clementine demands they either move to a large city in Syria or back to France where she is from. His father struggles with his lack of religious piety, something that his mother demands from him, including a demand that Riad be circumcised like all Muslim boys. Success always seems right around the corner for this family. With interesting relatives that make great secondary characters Sattouf has another hit with this graphic memoir.

As with the earlier two novels, the artwork consists of line drawings with a color scheme based on where the family is located during a scene. The drawings are colored pink when they are in Syria and blue when they are in France. Since most of the story takes place in Syria, this book is primarily colored in pink.

I have looked forward to getting this book since part 2 was published.  It was a long wait but well worth it. Now I have to wait for part 4!

I Remember Beirut

Zeina Abirached, in her follow-up graphic novel to A Game For Swallows, concentrates in I Remember Beirut on those things that she remembers about her life living in war torn Beirut in the 1980s. There is no formal plot. Each page begins with "I remember" and talks about a different memory she has such as the sound of unwrapping a Kitkat candy bar, never having running water and that the school bus did not stop in her neighborhood.

The artwork is the same used in A Game For Swallows.  The drawings are stark black and white.  Each time the letter "o" is used in a word the author placed a dot inside it. This is a bullseye and shows how victimized the residents feel about the war.  It is a most unconventional graphic style but works well for the story the author is telling.

I loved the book but must admit "Swallows" is better.

Soldier's Heart

Soldier's Heart The Campaign to Understand my WWII Veteran Father is a wonderful graphic memoir by Carol Tyler. Tyler shows how her father's war experiences traumatically affected him and, in turn, affected his relationships with his children as they were growing up, including how they obtained their own emotional baggage from their upbringing. The book joins the author's angst over her present life, a failed marriage and mentally ill daughter, with the memories her father has from his war experience. The trauma has now affected three generations. At the time the book was published in 2015, he was still alive and was 95 years old.

Carol Tyler wants to be closer to her parents but is unable to penetrate the hard exteriors they developed from the trauma of the war experience. Like most members of the greatest generation, they did not talk about the past. One day Charles Tyler calls his daughter on the phone and talks for 2 hours about the war. His daughter, the author, then begins 2 projects. She begins a scrapbook of her father's war years and also begins to research his war experiences by going through government archives and interviewing her father. What she puts together is a magnificent history of how WWII affected the generation that fought it and how their battle scars affected their abilities to raise their future families. Having been raised myself by this generation I can truthfully say that every family I grew up with has the same baggage that Tyler family has. It is part of our American history.

The reason for the title "Soldier's Heart" is simple. This was the term used after the Civil War to describe the PTSD that soldier's suffered from. The artwork changes throughout the book from comic panels to full page drawings done in both pen and watercolors. The colors vary by page from saturated colors to desaturated colors.

A Soldier's Heart is a fabulous history lesson on WWII. If you did not live through it I highly recommend that you read it. For those of us that lived with the aftermath of the war, it may explain why your family life turned out the way it did.

Simply magnificent!!!!!

The Best We Could Do

The Best We Could Do is the story of the Bui family in both Vietnam and the U. S. Most of the story, though, takes place in Vietnam.  It gives the family's history from the time of the  author's grandparents to the family's arrival in America in 1978 and then to the present time.

The story opens and ends in 2005 with the author giving birth to her first child and then switches to 1999 when the author left home to move in with her boyfriend. The cultural differences between the author and her mother and their inability to communicate confounds the author and results in her wanting to search for her roots in Vietnam.  Her memories move back to 1978 Malaysia where the Buis lived in a refugee camp for several months before emigrating to America. Then we travel back in time and to Vietnam as the author's father tells her the family history. This is where most of the story is told.

The Bui family was quite resourceful in adapting to the changing political terrain in Vietnam. They were always able to remain just above destitution until the Vietnam War decimated the country. The Buis were not concerned with which side of the war was right or wrong.  They were only trying to survive and keep their extended family safe. Author Thi Bui's parents' relationships with their own parents is dissected and how the grandparents coped with a changing country is shown. Likewise, Thi Bui's siblings' relationships with their parents also unfolds as they grow up and learn to deal with the harshness of their lives.

I was captivated by the family's story and believe that their cultural background aided their ability to survive conflict and make a new life in a different country. The Vietnamese are longsuffering.  They are family oriented and as long as the family is OK, life is good.

I am unclear on the reason for title of the book. Obviously, the family's sufferings to survive could be the reason the author chose "The Best We Could Do." However, I think it is about her relationship with her mother. Thi Bui became assimilated into American culture including its expression of affection. Her mother rarely displayed affection or said what she felt in her heart, which I believe is pretty normal for a person who experienced the trauma of war and displacement. These differences seemed to create a divide between them that could not be breached. Ms. Bui clearly wants to be closer to her mother. Another thing I noticed is that throughout the book the author included several private moments that she had with her mother. She did not share her siblings having these moments. With the book opening and closing with the author having a baby, and her mother being present for the birth, instead of this being a family saga, it seems more like the back story for the reason that their relationship is restrained.

Since the book is a graphic novel I feel that I must mention the artwork. Ms. Bui used pen and ink drawings to tell her story. They were colored in cool-toned orange shades.

The Best We Could Do is such a great story that I read it twice in a row. I cannot recommend it more highly. I think that you will love it and, at the very least, you will learn about the history of the Vietnamese in the 20th century.

The Arab of the Future

The Arab of the Future A Childhood in the Middle East 1978-1984 is a graphic memoir by Riad Sattouf covering his life from birth through age 6.  It recounts his childhood in Libya, France and Syria in the 1970s and 1980s and is written from his perspective.  Sattouf is a former Charlie Hebdo cartoonist.

The book opens with his French mother Clementine and Syrian father Abdul-Razak meeting in France where both were in school at the Sorbonne.  It was not love at first sight but they eventually married and graduated.  His father had received his doctorate in history and accepted a job as an assistant professor in Libya where the family then moved.

Both mother and son stood out from their neighbors because of their blonde hair and were thought by most to either be American or Jewish.  Riad took notice of the Gaddafi regime's provocations toward Israel and America and had to deal with food shortages as well as the cultural differences between France and Libya.  When Gaddafi ordered people of different social statuses to switch jobs his father started looking for a new position. After two years in Libya they returned to France for the summer and then traveled to Syria where his father had been hired as an assistant professor at a university.

In Syria Riad suffered abuse from his cousins because they thought he was Jewish due to his blonde hair.  He saw a country in ruins and posters of Hafez al-Assad everywhere.  Again, Riad had to deal with a new culture.  The family returned to France for the summer to visit with Clementine's parents and then went back to Syria.  It is here that the story ends with a promise that the story will be continued in another book.

While the artwork consists of basic black and white line drawings there are alternating color schemes for the different locations of the author's life. France is light blue, Libya is yellow and Syria is light pink.

The name of the book was inspired by the author's father who said that he was trying to raise his son to be an arab of the future, one that would get an education to escape religious dogma.  His father, while educated, was sexist, racist and an anti-semite despite himself being an arab of the future.  He treated his wife abysmally and I have to wonder why she stayed married to him.

The Arab of the Future shows the Arabic mindset and was educational for me. The story was not as compelling to me as other graphic novels but I am still looking forward to reading the sequels to this novel.