Farewell to Manzanar

I've never been an avid reader of memoir. As a genre, it simply holds little interest for me. But this book is superb, drawing a clear (but concise and brief) picture of what it is like to experience having your own country treat you like a criminal and imprison you when you are only a child and for no reason other than your heritage. The final chapters of this book are wonderful.

It's sobering to think that there are—or at least were—at least a hundred thousand possible books about the incarceration period; that only the tiniest fraction of those will ever be known. Wakatsuki writes matter-of-factly about her experience, not only in the prison but after, including the impossible task of trying to fit in in white America. She readily speaks of shame, confusion, fear; of the irrecoverable loss of her father from the humiliations he underwent. Of her growing awareness, as she aged, of what that imprisonment must've been like for her parents and older siblings. The only thing she doesn't write about is the possibility that it would happen again.