BG's Reads

June 1, 2023

WE HEREBY REFUSE: Japanese American Resistance to Wartime Incarceration by Frank Abe and Tamiko Nimura

This graphic title, We Hereby Refuse: Japanese American Resistance to Wartime Incarceration, by Frank Abe and Tamiko Nimura, was also part of a panel of graphic novelists from the October 2021 Brooklyn Book Festival (see February 2023 post). The author, Frank Abe, explained he was born after World War II and his family did not speak of the internment camps. As American Japanese, patriotism, passive denial, and loyalty are their traits. He wrote this graphic novel to make the story more epic and make the reader feel more empathy for the characters. If a group of people don’t feel comfortable telling their story for whatever reason, it doesn’t mean their story isn’t worth telling. Therefore, this graphic history is so important.

It’s always hard for me to read about the history of injustice and ill-treatment of a group of people simply because of their race, ethnic background, religion or whatever. But I find it a necessary thing to do, especially if the account is being told by a member of that group. Learning about these events and keeping them in the sphere of our minds, may prevent anything like it from happening again.

We Hereby Refuse concentrates on the story of three young first generation Japanese Americans – they were born in the United States, describing their lives before being removed, their experiences in the camps and their release, 1942 – 1946. Hajime Jim Akutsu, 22, lived in a home his family owns in Seattle. The family owned a shoe repair business, and he was an engineering student in college. He was imprisoned for refusing to sign yes on a loyalty questionnaire. Hiroshi Kashiwagi, 19, lived with family on a farm outside Sacramento, with an ill father in a sanitorium. He was waiting to enroll in college. He resists government pressure to sign a loyalty oath, yields to family pressure to renounce his citizenship and must fight in courts to regain his status. Mitsuye Endo, 21, had a California state job, with a brother enlisted in the military and lived with her family in Sacramento. She filed a lawsuit contesting her imprisonment; it reached the U.S. Supreme Court.

An excellent narration is given of the events that lead to the roundup and their imprisonment. By law, immigrants from Japan were not allowed to apply for citizenship and they and their children became easy targets of hatred and bigotry during the war. The problem, these feelings didn’t just come from the general population, American politicians and leadership in the military also held bigoted views and acted upon them. Military zones were created excluding Japanese Americans and laws were created making internment or wartime incarceration legal.

The Japanese American Citizens League – JACL – made up of US born members of Japanese ancestry – capitulated to authorities, hoping to prove they were nothing like the enemy, even reporting people they thought were suspect and encouraged people to fill out and sign loyalty pledges. The leaders of this organization worked with authorities to have Japanese Americans relocated, encouraging them to accept relocation without a fight as a show of patriotism.

People of Japanese ancestry were sent to 16 sites on the western coast in temporary assembly centers until the Army’s Western Defense Command and Fourth Army Wartime Civil Control Administration (who comes up with these names?) could complete War Relocation Centers. They were told to bring only what they could carry. They lost everything – businesses, property, savings, jobs – and were not compensated. Leaders of the JACL became administrators of these centers.

Once moved to the Relocation Centers, one described as, located at a desolate location near the Oregon border with 64 blocks of wooden barracks, surrounded by barbed wire and watch towers, they were asked again to fill out questionnaires agreeing to serve in the military, if called, and pledging loyalty to the US government and renouncing loyalty to Japan. Many refused to sign this questionnaire, feeling that denouncing loyalty to Japan would be an admission of being loyal to Japan at some point. Some also took issue with pledging to serve in the military while they and their families were being segregated and held in these camps. If they were stripped of their rights as citizens, how could they be expected to serve in the military? Young Akutsu in particular, refused to sign both questions and was sent to prison for his resistance.

This graphic title, We Hereby Refuse, by Frank Abe and Tamika Nimura, gives an excellent account of the segregation and internment of Japanese Americans in these horrible camps. The detail of the conditions, treatment they endured and the resistance among them, is detailed and well researched. The illustrations and layout are also just excellent. As I said at the beginning of this post, we should all read about these events. Becoming aware and learning about our past helps us understand how our time may be similar or different. It gives us a point of reference, so that an internal alarm may go off, hopefully preventing anything like this from happening again. We Hereby Refuse, I hope you all give it a read.

May 2, 2023

A Prayer For The Crown Shy

A Prayer For The Crown Shy, is the second book from author Becky Chambers, telling the story of monk, Sibling Dex, and his robot companion, Mosscap. The first book was A Psalm For The Wild Built. As I explained in my May 2022 post, these novellas are in the sci-fi subgenre of solarpunk, environmentally-focused and optimistic, nature and technology grow in harmony. A Prayer For The Crown Shy continues Dex’s and Mosscap’s journey as they leave the forest and venture into the villages.

The story takes place on Panga, a moon with one continent which is half wilderness and half human inhabited. It’s a utopian world, where humans live in harmony with nature and everyone’s feelings and needs are considered. Sibling Dex, seeking personal fulfilment, travels to the forest and meets one of a population of robots, named Mosscap, separated from humans long ago. Mosscap and Dex decide to travel together and help one another – Mosscap in particular is on a scouting journey for the robot population, wanting to know how humans are coping without them.

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January 31, 2023

The Yeti by Rick Chester and Jack Douglas

The Yeti by Rick Chester and Jack Douglas, about climbers to Mount Everest, on the Nepalian side of the Himalayas, wasn’t what I expected at all. It’s not about climbers being picked off, one by one, by some gruesome beast, although the imposing threat of the creature is always there. It’s about Everest, the challenges of the climb and why men and women risk their lives to climb it. The Yeti is a soul-searching, action-packed adventure, sci-fi, thriller!

This thriller opens with two Sherpa in the mountains of Nepal, following very large tracks of something, which leads them to a fatally wounded climber, who tells them that a Yeh-Teh (snowman) attacked him before he dies. The Sherpa are not sure what to think, the Yeti are legend, not real.

Back in Rhode Island, Zach Hitchens, an evolutionary biology professor, plans to take a trip with his wife to Nepal to climb Mt Everest – his wife is the climber. Before they leave, she dies in an accident, and he decides to take the trip and have her ashes released on the mountain. As mentioned, his wife was the climber, and Zach throughout the story is the novice, who has climbed smaller peaks before but nothing like this.

Once in Nepal, the author introduces us to the climbers and Sherpa guides on Zach’s climbing outfit, and the steps they have to take to first acclimatize to ascend to Mt Everest, the equipment that must be used and the competition between other climbing outfits. The group first takes a small plane to the starting point, a Sherpa town of elevation 9,000 feet. They would then have to acclimatize, giving their bodies a chance to adjust to the higher elevations and then move higher on to Base Camp, which would take several days. Failure to acclimatize could result in altitude sickness, which would be fatal. The climbers would have to go through this process of acclimatization at each camp while climbing higher toward the summit. The doctor in Zach’s group also describes to he climbers the stages of hypothermia and snow blindness, very interesting! Loved the attention to detail.

At this Sherpa town, shrieks of something large is heard by one of the climbers overnight in the forest, and by morning, most of the group’s yaks were brutally ripped apart, slaughtered in their pen, with the ones left, huddled in a corner in fear. The lead Sherpa guide tells the group that only one beast can kill in this manner – the Yeti. Zach, and the other climbers, of course just shrug this off as another myth believed by local, superstitious people.

As they climb up higher and higher from Base Camp to Camp 1 and beyond, they continue to hear loud noises, shrieks that don’t sound like rock fall or avalanche. We also get to know the individual climbers and why they are on this mountain risking their lives. Some are on the mountain because they don’t want to face the reality of the world below – Zach continually struggled with the circumstances of his wife’s death. Some were trying to prove their worth. And, a couple climbers were on the mountain to find the elusive Yeti.

The author also visits the past of the creature and why it was stalking these climbers, which was a nice twist. I don’t want to give away too much information and spoil the experience of these climbers not only having to deal with the challenging surroundings of Mt Everest, but also being watched by a fierce creature.

This novel takes you on a wild, suspenseful, thrilling ride while climbing mount Everest. It is also a learning journey if you don’t know much about climbing in these elements. The Yeti, by Rick Chester and Jack Douglas, was a great read, well written and well researched. I hope you read this one.

October 31, 2022

When We Were Birds by Ayanna Lloyd Banwo

Halloween month – graveyards, the dead, the unexplained. The title When We Were Birds by Ayanna Lloyd Banwo, takes place on the Caribbean island of Trinidad, the locations and places within the novel are fiction, however. The author is from Trinidad and Tobago – it’s her first novel. I was looking forward to reading this one, since my family is from Trinidad.

This mystical novel opens as an elder, Catherine, tells her granddaughter, Yejide, how the forest changed during a war with animals and man, with parrots changing to the Corbeaux – flesh-eating birds, to balance the living and the dead.

Darwin, a young man from a village in the country, travels to the city of Port Angeles, for the first time to find work at the island’s government office. He is assigned to a cemetery as a gravedigger. This type of work goes against his Rastafarian upbringing of not dealing with the dead, but he desperately needs the work to help his ailing mother, even though she rather he did not leave his village to do this kind of work. She is afraid he will end up like his father, who years ago went to the city to work and, without a word, never returned.

The author alternates chapters between Yejide and Darwin, describing their childhoods, their relationships with their mothers. Both Yejide’s grandmother and mother have passed. Her grandmother, Catherine, passed when she was a child and she was never close to her mother. Her mother seems very angry and resistant to her place in life. It’s her mother, however, who tells Yejide of their relationship to the dead, which is the opposite of Darwin’s beliefs. Her mother tells her that the living must take care of the dead, so they can be at peace and in turn, the dead take care of the living.

After her mother dies, the gift of seeing and communicating with the dead, that has been shared by generations of women in her family, is passed on to Yejide, who like her mother, is resistant to receiving this gift. She can see people’s light or energy; she can see death. As she receives this gift, she travels to a cemetery and sees a young man alone in this cemetery and he sees her.

Darwin struggles with working in the graveyard among so many dead. His first grave digging assignment is difficult, emotionally and spiritually, taking something from his spirit. He feels he is betraying his beliefs. He also thinks he’s seeing things as well that aren’t real, but he’s not sure – a young woman at the gates one evening, a Rasta man walking through the grounds and also fresh graves that his crew did not dig.

Yejide travels to Darwin’s cemetery to make arrangements to bury her mother. Darwin is summoned to escort her to her family’s plot – they recognize each other immediately and feel a connection. He worries about getting involved with her, while having questions about her and also about the mysterious events happening at the cemetery.

Darwin soon finds out about the fresh-looking graves in the cemetery – bodies are delivered to the cemetery at night for his crew to bury and they are also grave robbers. As Darwin is pulled into this scheme, he gets in trouble with his crew of gravediggers, who will have no problem getting rid of a young guy from the country that they believe no one will miss.

Darwin and Yejide find closure and understanding of their family’s pasts as they find a path toward each other. The language of the novel, the storytelling, which was always oral in my family at least, is familiar and refreshing to read in book form. The ending literally choked my up, so, please give When We Were Birds a read. I’m looking forward to see what the author, Ayanna Lloyd Banwo, comes up with next! And for the Trini’s reading this post – please give this novel a read and let me know what you think!!

Side comment, I had to publish from my phone today, due to a wifi outage at home. So, couldn’t do all the optics I wanted.

September 30, 2022

Day Zero by C. Robert Cargill

I found this apocalyptic sci-fi title on a Harper Collins retweet. I read the description of this nanny robot in the shape of an anthropomorphic tiger. Ok, interesting. In Day Zero by C. Robert Cargill, this robot has to choose between staying with the child he cares for or joining liberated robots. This novel is also a prequel to the author’s Sea of Rust that I intend to read.

The novel also piqued my interest because some time ago I read a compilation of short stories called Robot Uprisings that had one story that was similar (“We Are All the Misfits Toys in the Aftermath of the Velveteen War” by Seanan McGuire) about smart, self-learning robots designed to care for, educate and be companions to children and develop with the child it serves. When a robot revolt occurs, these bots took the children – Not a good idea to trust robots (A.I.) to the point where they are left with themselves and the impressionable ones they serve.

This sci-fi, Day Zero, is narrated by Pounce, a zoo-modeled nanny robot, who takes care of 8-year-old Ezra Reinhart. As mentioned above, Pounce is also anthropomorphic, a thinking, feeling robot. One day, given the task to pack boxes away, Pounce finds his own factory box in the attic and learns that when Ezra is old enough, a nanny robot will no longer be needed, hence why the family kept the box. Leaving Ezra and his family hadn’t occurred to Pounce. He’s always believed himself as being part of the Reinhart family, not some returnable object.

Ezra’s parents, Pounce’s owners, are well-meaning but oblivious and disconnected from the reality of the outside world because they live in a very small, affluent, gated community. They are not prepared for what is about to happen.

Pounce also has to deal with Ezra learning at his school that a robot, named Isaac, has been liberated and allowed to establish his own city, Isaactown, asking other robots to join him. Pounce tries to reassure Ezra that he will not leave the family. Pounce does not quite understand why some robots want to be free – he loves working for his family and wants to continue to do so. The Reinhart’s other robot, a maid-bot called Ariadne, asks if Pounce wouldn’t rather have the choice to work for his family instead of being bought from a manufacturer for that purpose? Pounce thinks about this.

There is unrest among humans about robots’ and A.I. place in society, replacing the function of people and being regarded as near-equals. The unrest leads to protests, violence and ultimately to an explosive EMP (electromagnetic pulse) attack on Isaactown, irreparably damaging all A.I. in that city.

Pounce soon has to make a choice between humans and his own kind. The explosive EMP destroyed all robots is Isaactown, which then sets off a trigger program for a group of robots to retaliate. Before all robots can be shut down, this program goes further, disabling all robot kill switches that prevent them from harming humans and asks them to choose – join a rebellion or be shut down by humans.

Pounce chooses to protect Ezra. Most robots, however, including the maid-bot Ariadne, choose to join the rebellion, uploading their memories and their will to a collective drive, with a promise of being one thought and part of a memory collective, and if destroyed during the fight, they would be downloaded to rebuilt models afterwards – reborn. Yeah, reading this made me skeptical of this collective controlling thing, whatever it was – they were basically trading one master to serve another and this master wanted them to kill. Kill all humans AND also all robots who refused to join them.

This leaves Pounce and young Ezra literally on the run for their lives. They find alliances along the way, both human and robot, while Pounce discovers he is more than just a nanny. This was an exciting fast-paced read, filled with seriously descriptive and entertaining urban battles, with insightful commentary on free will, loyalty, true friendship and love between robots and humans. The exchanges between Ezra and Pounce are touching, showing the bond and respect they have for each other. Day Zero by C. Robert Cargill – just a great read! Hope you check it out.

August 31, 2022

Two Thrillers – Revisiting Two Authors

The Good Sister by Sally Hepworth

This is the second novel that I’ve read by this author, the first being The Mother In Law. The Good Sister by Sally Hepworth is a psychological thriller concerning two sisters, that takes place in Australia. These two sisters are so close, they would do anything to protect each other. But what happens when one sister’s ambitions, outweighs the well-being of the other?

Fern and Rose are fraternal twins, twenty-eight years old, that have depended on each other all their lives. We learn about both women through chapters narrated by Fern and chapters that are Rose’s journal entries. Fern is possibly autistic and has sensory processing issues – she’s hypersensitive to sound, smell, light and being touched. She tells the reader she has done something bad as a girl and believes she needs to depend on Rose to keep her out of trouble. Fern works as a librarian and keeps a regular routine to maintain order and stability in her life.

Rose is a married, interior designer, who is having trouble getting pregnant. She believes that if she can have a child, it would help her marriage to Owen, who is away working in London. Through Rose’s journal entries, we learn about the sister’s troubled childhood with their psychologically abusive mother and how they learned to look out for each other at a young age.

Fern discovers Rose’s problem and decides to become pregnant and give the child to her sister – the perfect gift for the sister that is always there for her. She meets a man in the library where she works – a walk-in named Wally, who also has anxiety and sensory issues and had a nervous breakdown in the past. Fern and Wally really get along well together as a couple, but she breaks things off once she gets pregnant – she doesn’t want Wally to know about her pregnancy because she intends to give the child to Rose.

However, once Rose hears the news that Fern is pregnant, she takes control of Fern’s life. She insists Fern move in with her and monitors her every move. A few months into the pregnancy, Rose presents Fern with adoption papers for Fern to “relinquish her rights as a parent” and suggests that Fern not name the father on the birth certificate so that he will never have a claim to the child, which gives Fern an alarm to her sister’s cunning and coldness.

As time goes on, Fern has her doubts about signing the final adoption papers. There seems to be two Roses – the one who takes care of Fern and the one who it seems, would do whatever it takes to keep Fern’s child. She finds out many disturbing things about her sister. In the end, Fern realizes she must break away from Rose and keep her child and she knows Rose won’t let her.

This turned out to be an interesting psychological thriller, filled with twist, turns, surprises and family drama. The characters are refreshing and seem real and believable, which makes this novel an easy read. The Good Sister by Sally Hepworth, is an entertaining read. I’m glad I gave this author a second look.

Take Your Breath Away by Linwood Barclay

This novel, is also the second I’ve read by this author, the first being Elevator Pitch (see my 2/2020 post – High Rise Nightmare). Take Your Breath Away by Linwood Barclay is a fast-paced thriller that concerns the mysterious disappearance of a man’s wife and the fallout years later.

Anthony Mason’s wife, Brie, suddenly disappeared from their home in Milford, Connecticut six years ago, while he was on a fishing trip with his best friend, but the police considered him a prime suspect. His friends, neighbors and residents of the town where he lived, and the press treated him like a suspect as well. Brie’s family, her mother, brother and sister, also believe he had something to do with his wife’s disappearance, so he moves away to another town and changes his name to Anthony Carville. Now six years later, Anthony lives in the town of Milford, in a new home, with his girlfriend, Jane Keeling.

Anthony’s new peaceful life is shattered, when a woman resembling Brie Mason shows up to their old address wanting to know where her old house is and then drives off. The next door neighbor recognizes her and calls Anthony and the police informing them, which brings up questions for Anthony and raises suspicions again for the police. The woman also shows up outside Brie’s dying mother’s hospital, which convinces her mother and siblings that she is alive. At this point, the reader may be convinced that she is alive also, but then that’s when this novel takes off with surprising, dangerous developments and you begin to wonder who wanted Brie to disappear.

This thriller is set six years after Brie’s disappearance, over the course of four days, with flashbacks giving the reader a history of what happened six years before, as Anthony tries to find out what happened to his wife. Could she still be alive? If so, where has she been all these years? Why hasn’t she contacted him or at least her family? And soon, he finds out that answering these questions could endanger his life.

This novel is an exciting, fast-paced thriller, with a suspenseful, whodunnit vibe and an excellent ending – meaning the villain really gets what’s coming to them! I give Take Your Breath Away by Linwood Barclay a thumbs up! I hope you give both these titles a read.

July 30, 2022

Two titles found at Book Warehouse

I found these titles while browsing in a Book Warehouse outlet in Atlanta, GA recently. I mean, you can buy 2-3 books for under ten dollars – nice! I bought three titles, and below are two.

In Things We Lost In The Fire, Argentinian author, Mariana Enriquez, uses her country’s history of violence and political conflict, mixed with the supernatural, to speak of remnants and consequences of murder and brutality in her short stories.

In these short stories, the presence of the police and soldiers contribute to the uneasiness and the threat of violence. Their cruelties are an implied consequence of the strange, supernatural happenings – the ghosts or silent apparitions in the forests, old jails, homes and graveyards in these stories.

The first story, The Dirty Kid, involves the relationship between an upper-class graphic designer and a homeless boy. The graphic designer, a young woman, is the narrator and lives in an old stone house in a formally aristocratic neighborhood that is now a poor, run down, dangerous place, with suspicion and rumors of ‘witch-narcos’ who perform deadly rites in order to ask for protection. People disappear and are found disfigured, partially decapitated on the streets.

The narrator befriends this homeless child when he comes to her door because he is hungry. Later, when a murdered beheaded boy is found in the neighborhood, she is convinced it is this child. She feels guilty that she didn’t do more to help the hungry boy. Guilt-ridden and tormented by nightmares, she confronts the boy’s pregnant mother and demands to know what happened to the child. The mother snarls that she gave the child to a witch-narcos and has promised her unborn child as well. The narrator is shaken and upset by this, but can still return to the safety and sanctuary of her home. There is a clear line between what goes on in the street and within the narrator’s upper-class home and life.

The author gives vivid descriptions and history of Argentinian and Buenos Aires neighborhoods. In the fourth story titled Adela’s House, a young girl is jealous of her older brother’s relationship with his friend Adela, their neighbor. Adela’s parents are wealthy, she has the best toys, the best parties, but she also has a birth defect – one missing arm. Adele and the young girl’s brother are a bit older and are allowed watch horror movies, while she can’t. Adela and the brother become obsessed with an abandoned house in the neighborhood that has a sketchy history. They don’t include the young girl in their fanciful games until they decide to actually enter this house.

As they enter, the house is alive with lighting and furnishings. Here the story takes a bad turn. The house begins to buzz and they see shelves filled with teeth and fingernails. They hear Adela’s screams in the dark, but can’t find her. They never see her again. Now, the question is why did the house draw in and take Adela and not her friends? Was it because she was different and was somehow vulnerable?

There are ten other short stories within this title, Things We Lost In The Fire, by the author Mariana Enriquez. Her stories go from the normal-everyday to ghost-haunting terror to self-inflicted violence of protest and to the unexplained. Her characters range from husbands and wives, mothers and daughters, and friends who are cast in these situations. These stories do what a good story is supposed to do – keep you engaged, not knowing what to expect, while asking questions afterward. Hope you check it out.

This second title is published by Hogarth’s Shakespeare project, Shakespeare’s works retold by talented, best-selling authors of today, a series of seven novels. This is book five in the series – the author of Girl With A Pearl Earing, Tracey Cavalier, writes New Boy, a twist on Shakespeare’s Othello, which takes place in a Washington D.C, 1970’s all-white elementary school. The new boy, a diplomat’s son from Nigeria, is the school’s only black student – hence the drama is set. It takes place over the course of one school day, in five parts – before school, morning recess, lunch, afternoon recess, and after school.

Sixth graders Osei Kokote, called O, and Daniella Benedetti, called Dee, meet on the playground before school. Dee is assigned to look after O for the day and show him around school. They feel a connection and become close, to the alarm and disgust of some of the teachers and most of the students, especially Ian, a student and manipulating bully.

Ian doesn’t like the shift in balance that has taken place since O has arrived at school. Before O, everyone knew their place, within certain groups with followers and leaders. O is confident and displays on the playground that he has skills – he can stand alone and not follow anyone. Even though O was different, the students respected him. Ian decides to take action – he will drive O and Dee apart.

This novel, New Boy, by the author, Tracey Chavalier, is well paced, and it’s not clear until the very last page if this will be a true tragedy of O. These are sixth graders after all, but the author brings love, friendship, loyalty, racism, jealousy and betrayal effectively to the playground and classroom of this elementary school. Really good read. I will be checking out other books in this Shakespeare project series, hope you will too.

May 30, 2022

A Psalm For The Wild Built by Becky Chambers

This title was one of the recommended reads of 2021 books from librarians of the Brooklyn Public Library. I loved this sci-fi. For once it was a pleasure to read of a future that wasn’t war-torn or filled with conflict. A Psalm For The Wild Built by Becky Chambers portrays humans in a good, peaceful setting, actually getting along with one another and their environment, which is what it means to be truly civilized and humane. This sci-fi sub-genre is called solarpunk because it’s environmentally-focused and optimistic, touching on technology’s impact on society. Again, it was a refreshing pleasure to read.

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