Beneath the Wide Silk Sky

Beneath the Wide Silk Sky 

By Emily Inouye Huey 

Scholastic Press, 2022. 323 pages. Young Adult 

With the recent death of her mother and the possibility of her family losing their farm, Samantha Sakamoto does not have space in her life for dreams, but when faced with prejudice and violence in her Washington State community after Pearl Harbor, she is determined to use her photography to document the bigotry around her. 

This was a very thought-provoking read. Samantha’s family immigrated to Washington State from Japan before she was born, and while there was always a level of prejudice in their community, it was exacerbated after Pearl Harbor. Suddenly her friends were suspicious that she and her family were spies (despite the fact that they’ve known each other all their lives), and she struggles to make sense of why the white members of her community would suddenly treat her family and so differently. This is a very character-driven book, and it focuses on the gradual escalation of tensions leading up to the U.S. Government’s incarceration of Japanese Americans during WWII. A beautifully written and sobering reminder of how bigotry destroys lives, and why this aspect of American history shouldn’t be forgotten. 

If you liked Beneath the Wide Silk Sky, you might also like: 

We Are Not Free  

By Traci Chee 

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2020. 384 pages. Young Adult 

For 14-year-old budding artist Minoru Ito, her two brothers, her friends, and the other members of the Japanese-American community in southern California, the three months since Pearl Harbor was attacked have become a waking nightmare: attacked, spat on, and abused with no way to retaliate--and now things are about to get worse, their lives forever changed by the mass incarcerations in the relocation camps. 

Displacement  

By Kiku Hughes 

First Second, 2020. 274 pages. Young Adult Comic

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. 

ACS