Title: Displacement

Author: Kiku Hughes

Publisher: First Second 2020

Genre: Graphic Novel

Pages: 283

Rating: 5/5 stars

Reading Challenges: 

Kiku is on vacation in San Francisco when suddenly she finds herself displaced to the 1940s Japanese-American internment camp that her late grandmother, Ernestina, was forcibly relocated to during World War II.

These displacements keep occurring until Kiku finds herself "stuck" back in time. Living alongside her young grandmother and other Japanese-American citizens in internment camps, Kiku gets the education she never received in history class. She witnesses the lives of Japanese-Americans who were denied their civil liberties and suffered greatly, but managed to cultivate community and commit acts of resistance in order to survive.

Our June book club selection and a completely new-to-me book. This graphic novel details the experiences of Americans during the Japanese interment of WWII. While I knew a decent amount of the specifics, this slim book conveys a lot of information in a gentle, concise way. We follow a modern girl as she experiences what her grandmother did in WWII. The treatment of the people is brutal, but the book doesn’t dwell on the gore. There are very emotional scenes between characters. I imagine that we are going to have a lot of interesting discussions And I’m definitely put this one onto my homeschool TBR for future years.

Next up on the TBR pile: