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They Called Us Enemy: Expanded Edition Hardcover – August 25, 2020
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Now with sixteen pages of bonus content from George Takei and his co-creators: a new afterword plus a behind-the-scenes tour of the process of researching, writing, drawing, and promoting They Called Us Enemy, featuring historical documents, scripts, sketches, photos, and more!
George Takei has captured hearts and minds worldwide with his magnetic performances, sharp wit, and outspoken commitment to equal rights. But long before he braved new frontiers in Star Trek, he woke up as a four-year-old boy to find his own birth country at war with his father's -- and their entire family forced from their home into an uncertain future.
In 1942, at the order of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, every person of Japanese descent on the west coast was rounded up and shipped to one of ten "relocation centers," hundreds or thousands of miles from home, where they would be held for years under armed guard.
They Called Us Enemy is Takei's firsthand account of those years behind barbed wire, the terrors and small joys of childhood in the shadow of legalized racism, his mother's hard choices, his father's tested faith in democracy, and the way those experiences planted the seeds for his astonishing future.
What does it mean to be American? Who gets to decide? When the world is against you, what can one person do? To answer these questions, George Takei joins cowriters Justin Eisinger & Steven Scott and artist Harmony Becker for the journey of a lifetime.
- Print length224 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- Dimensions6.87 x 0.88 x 9.25 inches
- PublisherTop Shelf Productions
- Publication dateAugust 25, 2020
- ISBN-101603094709
- ISBN-13978-1603094702
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Editorial Reviews
Review
Winner of the 2020 Eisner Award for Best Reality-Based Work!
"They Called Us Enemy is truly beautiful — moving, thoughtful, important, engaging, and stunningly rendered. I am so excited to see this book's impact on the world." — Jacqueline Woodson, National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature and National Book Award-winning author of Brown Girl Dreaming
"George Takei’s story reveals the important lessons of the WWII Japanese American Incarceration that still need to be learned today. They Called Us Enemy is a compelling must-read for all ages.” — Karen Korematsu, Founder and Executive Director, Fred T. Korematsu Institute
"Riveting... Takei has evolved into an increasingly powerful voice for oppressed communities, and Enemy finds him at peak moral clarity — an unflinching force in these divisive times." — The Washington Post
"A detailed, wrenching account... They Called Us Enemy should prove the most potent introduction for younger readers to this ignoble chapter in our history." — The New York Times
"Powerful, moving and relevant." — Los Angeles Times
"Moving and layered... Giving a personal view into difficult history, [They Called Us Enemy] is a testament to hope and tenacity in the face of adversity." — Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"A compelling blend of nostalgia and outrage... this approachable, well-wrought graphic memoir is important reading, particularly in today's political climate." — Booklist (starred review)
"This evocative memoir shares stories of the nation’s past, draws heartbreaking parallels to the present, and serves as a cautionary tale for the future."— School Library Journal (starred review)
"Emotionally staggering... They Called Us Enemy also inspires readers to engage through democracy to insist that we treat fellow human beings with fairness and dignity." — Amazon's "Best Books of the Month"
"A cogent reminder that liberty and justice is not always for all, They Called Us Enemy explores a dark episode of America’s past as it dives into the heart of a pop culture icon." — Foreword Reviews' "Indie Books That'll Blow You Away"
"The creators are gifted storytellers, and Takei has a great story to tell, full of unexpected twists. And as compelling as it is, it is also inspirational, a story of ordinary people and the choices they faced in an extraordinary time." — ICv2
"A tale of triumph over adversity." — BBC America
About the Author
Justin Eisinger is co-author of the New York Times Best Selling graphic memoir, They Called Us Enemy, George Takei's story of childhood internment. During a career of more than a dozen years immersed in graphic storytelling, a fateful encounter with March author and Civil Rights pioneer Congressman John Lewis inspired Eisinger to turn his experience to bringing engaging non-fiction stories to readers. Born in Akron, Ohio, Eisinger lives in San Diego, California, with his wife and two dogs, and in his spare time publishes North America's only inline skating magazine.
Steven Scott has worked regularly in comics since publishing his debut book in 2010, most notably as a publicist. His writing has appeared in publications by Archie Comics, Arcana Studios, and Heavy Metal magazine. As a blogger/columnist he has written for the pop culture sites Forces of Geek, Great Scott Comics, and PopMatters.
Harmony Becker is an artist and illustrator. She is the creator of the comics Himawari Share, Love Potion, and Anemone and Catharus. She is a member of a multicultural family and has spent time living in South Korea and Japan. Her work often deals with the theme of the language barrier and how it shapes people and their relationships.
Product details
- Publisher : Top Shelf Productions; Expanded edition (August 25, 2020)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 224 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1603094709
- ISBN-13 : 978-1603094702
- Reading age : 9+ years, from customers
- Item Weight : 1.56 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.87 x 0.88 x 9.25 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #24,325 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #7 in Educational & Nonfiction Graphic Novels
- #17 in Biographies & History Graphic Novels
- #918 in Memoirs (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the authors
With a career spanning five decades, George Takei is known around the world for his founding role in the acclaimed television series Star Trek, in which he played Hikaru Sulu, helmsman of the Starship Enterprise. Takei starred in three seasons of Star Trek and later reprised his iconic role in six movies.
Mashable.com says Takei is the #1 most-influential person on Facebook, with more than 4.2 million followers. Takei has more than 700,000 followers on Twitter. Takei authored “Oh Myyy! There Goes the Internet,” released in e-book and paperback earlier this year, and it ranked #10 on the New York Times E-book nonfiction list.
Takei is featured in the comedy film Larry Crowne, starring Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts, released in July 2011 by Universal Pictures.
Takei also stars in the action-comedy series Supah Ninjas, which premiered in April 2011 on Nickelodeon.
Takei and Tony Award winner Lea Salonga are developing a new musical called "Allegiance.” The musical is an epic story of love, family and heroism during the Japanese American internment. Allegiance's world premiere at the Old Globe theatre in San Diego in 2012 will be followed by a Broadway run.
Takei's on-camera television credits also include guest appearances on The Neighbors, Hawaii Five-0, The New Normal, Malcolm in the Middle, Scrubs, Miami Vice, MacGyver, Hawaii Five-0, The Six Million Dollar Man, Mission: Impossible, My Three Sons, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and The Twilight Zone. He has appeared on The Big Bang Theory, Psych, 3rd Rock from the Sun and Will & Grace.
Takei has brought his voiceover talent to hundreds of characters in film, television, video games and commercials during his prolific career. In film, Takei can be heard voicing characters in such films as Mulan, Mulan II and Batman Beyond: The Movie. He has voiced characters for numerous animated series including The Simpsons, Scooby-Do and the Samurai Sword, Transformers: Animated, Kim Possible, Futurama, El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Hey Arnold!, Samurai Jack, Hercules, Spider-Man, The Smurfs and George Lucas' Star Wars: The Clone Wars.
Adding to his resume, Takei has provided narration on many projects including the 2009 PBS series The National Parks: America's Best Idea, the 2006 Peabody Award-winning radio documentary, Crossing East, centered on the history of Asian American immigration to the United States and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (cassette) which garnered Takei a 1987 Grammy Award nomination for Best Spoken Word Album.
In addition to a busy acting career, Takei regularly appears on Howard Stern's Sirius XM satellite radio show. He is also an accomplished author having written Oh Myyy! There Goes the Internet, co-written the science-fiction novel Mirror Friend, Mirror Foe with Robert Asprin and published his autobiography To the Stars in 1994.
Takei, a Japanese American who from age 4 to 8 was unjustly interned in two U.S. internment camps during World War II, is an outspoken supporter of human right issues and community activist. Takei is chairman emeritus and a trustee of the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles. Takei has served as the spokesperson for the Human Rights Campaign "Coming Out Project," and was cultural affairs chairman of the Japanese American Citizens League. He was appointed to the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission by former President Clinton and the government of Japan awarded Takei the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Rosette, for his contribution to U.S. - Japanese relations. The decoration was conferred by His Majesty, Emperor Akihito, at the Imperial Palace in Tokyo. In 2007, Asteroid 7307 Takei, located between Mars and Jupiter, was named in the performer's honor in appreciation for his social work.
Takei currently lives in Los Angeles with his husband Brad Takei. They were married at the Japanese American National Museum in Little Tokyo on Sept. 14, 2008.
Steven Scott is the Eisner award-winning co-author of the New York Times bestselling graphic memoir THEY CALLED US ENEMY, about the childhood internment of George Takei. He has written CAT NINJA, TIME BUDDIES, and more comics for Epic! Originals where he served as a staff writer. In addition, he's written graphic novels for a yet-to-be announced series for Capstone. He is also the cartoonist of his own comic strip memoir, G'DAY YANK. Having grown up a military brat, he has lived all over the U.S., spent his youth in Australia, and currently resides in Canada.
Justin Eisinger is co-author of the New York Times Best Selling graphic memoir, "They Called Us Enemy," George Takei's story of childhood internment, and co-creator of a forthcoming illustrated nonfiction series at Chronicle Books. Eisinger recently served as Senior Editor at entertainment publishing house Insight Editions, where he spearheaded a range of titles from "Seinfeld: The Official Cookbook" to "Dungeons & Dragons: The Ultimate Pop-Up Book." During a career of more than a dozen years immersed in graphic storytelling at IDW Publishing, a fateful encounter with Civil Rights pioneer Congressman John Lewis inspired Eisinger to turn his experience adapting animated episodes and film into comic books towards bringing engaging nonfiction stories to readers. After 18 years in San Diego, Eisinger has returned to NE Ohio with his wife and two dogs, and in his spare time publishes North America's only inline skating magazine, ONEblademag.
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Overall, it was interesting to read.
This graphic novel is nothing short of a brutally honest look into the politics of fear. Powerful politicians will use their influence and charisma to rile up their supporters into believing that the less fortunate are what’s wrong with this country. We saw it with the Japanese internment in George Takei’s book and we’re seeing it today with the Muslim ban, the family separation policy at the Mexican border, and black people getting harsher treatment from law enforcement than whites. The one thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history. But it doesn’t have to be this way. This book has the power to educate its readers. When you familiarize yourself with your fellow world citizens, you’re less likely to judge them. That’s what “They Called Us Enemy” means to me and that’s one of the reasons it’s getting a perfect five out of five stars. The more educated we are, the better off we’ll be. That means leaving behind comfortable bigotry and thinking about what it’s like to be the other guy, which is often a horrifying reality.
But of course, there will always be those contrarians out there who say, “It wasn’t all that bad!” These same people say it about black slavery, they call Mexican border detention centers “Summer Camp”, and they’ll no doubt say it about Japanese internment camps. Having guaranteed living conditions doesn’t mean those conditions are necessarily good. Did I mention the barbed wire fencing around the camps? Did I mention the abusive treatment from the soldiers? What about the fact that George Takei’s family had to live in a horse stall that smelled like rancid feces? What about the infighting among Japanese prisoners who joined the military to prove their patriotism and the prisoners who stayed in the camps to protest? Had enough harsh reality? But wait, there’s one more juicy detail: institutionalization. Some prisoners were so familiar with the routine life of the camps that they couldn’t imagine getting back on their feet in a normal society. Now imagine a child as young as George Takei feeling that way upon leaving the camp. You get to see all of this through the author’s eyes whether you want to or not. It won’t be pleasant, but it’ll be a necessary kick in the butt for the apathetic and fearful.
Despite the shortness and quick pacing of the book, you will feel as though you’ve taken an entire US history course in one sitting. Let this be a message to you all. Treat your neighbors with kindness and respect. Treat your inferiors with the same level of understanding and love. If you see an injustice happening, don’t stay quiet. Be the activist you were meant to become. Be a passionate enough voice in this battle for equality that those in power will have no choice but to listen. Let your words haunt them like schizophrenic ghosts. Will this change anything? Let me put it this way: we don’t have a choice but to activate our activism. The world can’t survive without making progressive leaps and bounds. That is the nature of time. Any questions?
Top reviews from other countries
The role gave Takei recognition and the springboard to further LGBT+ rights as well as the opportunity to address injustices around the internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII.
While, as a UK reader of ‘They Called Us Enemy’, certain nuisances of the US constitution left me a little cold, the human story behind the treatment of a whole swathe of people - purely due to their racial heritage - is powerfully told and, as the book itself points out, the resonances in recent American history - given the actions of Trump - remain deeply concerning.
Takei’s an inspiring individual who draws greatly on the inspiration of his own parents and, in particular, his father. This book is also an inspiration, illuminating an aspect of American history about which I had little awareness. It is also about more than one moment in history and how one set of people were treated during it, it makes it clear that this one episode is part of a wider continuum about the choices individuals and states make in treating people and their communities with respect and fairness. It also serves as a warning that advances in civil rights are rarely uniform and enduring: they ebb and flow. Gains, once made, cannot be assumed to be forever - far from it - and states can take decades rectifying wrongs. Rights need fighting for day-by-day so that they are maintained, something Takei does not flinch from, whether here or in his daily life and, for that, I commend him, his work and this book.