Reviews tagging 'Hate crime'

Displacement by Kiku Hughes

8 reviews

klsreads's review

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

This is a sweet story, a mix of fact and fantasy. Kiku writes and illustrates her journey as a mixed-race, queer Japanase-American unearthing her family history in WWII internment camps. (She refers to interment camps as incarceration camps throughout the book, and rightly so). A magic fog transports her back in time to experience the racism and fearmongering about Asian Americans in the 1940's. Kiku is incarcerated in a room next to her grandmother and great-grandparents and follows their life while cultivating her own in the camp. This is a story about alienation from culture, generational trauma, and the moored "otherness" of multiply marginalized identities. It moved a bit slowly at some points, but it's rich with history, and the art is beautiful. Shamefully, I learned a lot from this short graphic novel. It's a beautiful and real tale of resistance and reconnection. 

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement, Hate crime, Racial slurs, Racism, Xenophobia, Police brutality, Grief, Gaslighting, Colonisation, and War

Moderate: Cancer, Death, Violence, Death of parent, and Murder

ktdakotareads's review

informative reflective fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.0

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement and Hate crime

Moderate: Medical content and Death of parent

Minor: Blood

smilagros's review

challenging dark emotional informative sad tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

5.0

“ Being in the future meant very little when my education on the past was so limited“. This is one of my favorite graphic novels of all time. I wish more people would talk about it because wow. It was beautiful illustrations and the story was not a history book even though it’s about history. I cannot recommend this graphic novel enough. 

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Cancer, Confinement, Hate crime, Racism, Terminal illness, Xenophobia, Police brutality, Gaslighting, War, and Deportation

readingwithkaitlyn's review against another edition

emotional informative reflective fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement, Death, Racism, Blood, Murder, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Emotional abuse, Gun violence, Hate crime, Mental illness, Medical content, Grief, Colonisation, and Deportation

Minor: Cancer, Terminal illness, Xenophobia, Death of parent, and War

Incarceration camps, disconnection, WWII, Donald Trump, Pearl Habor, Anti-Muslim rhetoric (critical stance), Anti-Black racism, Pearl Habor, Civil Rights Movement, cigarettes, starvation, suffering, poor living conditions.

sallytiffany's review

dark emotional informative reflective sad fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

Wow. This was a quick and engaging read. It helped me learn a lot of history and had a powerful message of generational trauma. I really loved this one. 

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement, Hate crime, Forced institutionalization, Colonisation, and Deportation

Moderate: Death, Emotional abuse, Gun violence, Violence, Grief, and War

rakkaussipsi's review

emotional informative reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Racial slurs, Racism, and Xenophobia

Moderate: Hate crime

queenqueso's review against another edition

challenging emotional inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

---

Content Warnings

Moderate: Death, Hate crime, Racial slurs, Racism, Xenophobia, Death of parent, and Murder

harukoreads's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring mysterious reflective sad fast-paced

5.0

This book, about a yonsei teenage girl traveling back in time to relive her grandmother and great-grandparents experiences in the Japanese American Incarceration Camps, is one of the best graphic novels I've ever read. 

The illustrations are crisp and clean, with expressive line work and a muted color palette that perfectly reflects the somber yet hopeful tone. The story itself goes into detail about the day-to-day realities of Camp as well as the intergenerational trauma and activism that resulted from this human rights atrocity. 

As an OwnVoices reviewer (I'm a mixed yonsei woman who's grandparents were in the Camps just like the author/main character - not to mention a queer visual artist too!) I appreciated the nuance in this story, particularly the focus on how Camp had a lasting effect generations later. Like Kiku, my grandparents were in the Camps when they were young, and the violent anti-Japanese racism of the time discouraged them from passing down both language and Japanese culture to their children and grandchildren. And like Kiku, my family has watched the revival of American incarceration camps in the past few years and spoken out against them, knowing that just as they were wrong in the 1940s, they are wrong today. I appreciated how this book specifically highlighted the racial justice work of Japanese organizations Densho and Tsuru for Solidarity, and thought the focus on racial justice was done well (the descriptions of the model minority myth and Japanese anti-Blackness were particularly well done!).

Overall, this is a thoughtful, thorough, emotional account of Japanese incarceration through a modern lens. If you've never heard anything about the Japanese Incarceration camps, this is an easy entry point that is also visually stunning and poignant. 

---

Content Warnings

Moderate: Racism and Grief

Minor: Death, Gun violence, and Hate crime