Know Your Books: We Are Not Free - Traci Chee (Blog Tour & Review)

Thursday, 3 September 2020

We Are Not Free - Traci Chee (Blog Tour & Review)

Date of Reading: 02/09/2020

Author: Traci Chee

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Date of Publication: September 1, 2020

Source: NetGalley

Rating: 4/5

(This review is part of the blog tour organised by Colored Pages Bookish Tours)

About the book:

“All around me, my friends are talking, joking, laughing. Outside is the camp, the barbed wire, the guard towers, the city, the country that hates us.

We are not free.

But we are not alone.”

From New York Times best-selling and acclaimed author Traci Chee comes We Are Not Free, the collective account of a tight-knit group of young Nisei, second-generation Japanese American citizens, whose lives are irrevocably changed by the mass U.S. incarcerations of World War II.

Fourteen teens who have grown up together in Japantown, San Francisco.

Fourteen teens who form a community and a family, as interconnected as they are conflicted.

Fourteen teens whose lives are turned upside down when over 100,000 people of Japanese ancestry are removed from their homes and forced into desolate incarceration camps.

In a world that seems determined to hate them, these young Nisei must rally together as racism and injustice threaten to pull them apart.

Review:

I am not affected by this book. I am not an American and it's not my country which committed these atrocities. Why should I be bothered? Then the nightmares began. And I knew. There is no way to run. I cannot forget this story, even if I try to. That's the power of the written word. Who was I kidding again?

Fourteen youths. Incarcerated with their families in the aftermath of the Pearl Harbour attack. This is their story. Written in multiple POVs, reading this book felt like looking through a window to peek at the family living inside the room. All the stories are connected yet different. They have their personal woes and also pleasures, like a softball match. Inspired by the author's own family history, these fourteen voices make it known that they cannot be forgotten.

Other than the brief understanding, I didn't know much about the US incarceration camps before reading this remarkable work. Stamped as enemies, this San Franciscan Japanese community is forcibly deported from their homes to live in inhuman conditions and this happens in a country which advertises freedom more than anything else. The betrayal, the anger and the confusion that they experience are vividly portrayed by Traci Chee, making it so heartbreaking and real.

Not many books can't be claimed to have the power to haunt my dreams at night. 'We are not Free' is one of the exceptions and though bittersweet, I am happy to be splashed with some hard realities.

Favourite Quotes:

"It doesn't matter how good we are, because they see only what they want to see, and when they look at us, all they see are Japs"

"And I get it finally. Gaman. The ability to hold your pain and bitterness inside you and not let them destroy you. To make something beautiful through your anger, or with your anger, and neither erase it nor let it define you. To suffer. And to rage. And to persevere."

"I learned a long time ago that the secret to academic success isn't smarts. It's knowing what they want from you and giving it to them with a smile."

"Sometimes I think it'd be easier to be stupid, because then at least I wouldn't be miserable all the time."

"They say they're here for our safety, but no one feels safe when they've got a gun pointed at them."

Meet the author:

Traci Chee is the New York Times best-selling author of The Reader trilogy. She studied literature and creative writing at UC Santa Cruz and earned a master of arts degree from San Francisco State University. She is Japanese American and was inspired to write We Are Not Free by her family’s experience during World War II. Some of the events she includes in the book are loosely inspired by their stories. She loves books, poetry and papercrafts, as well as bonsai gardening and games. She lives in California.