A moving, insightful portrait.
Illuminates the story of a Japanese American activist’s experiences with internment and her perseverance in rebuilding her life.
In 1941, Sato’s family was living near Sacramento, California, on her family’s small but successful farm. Seven of her younger siblings were in school, another was in the U.S. Army, and Sato herself had just entered college. A year later, everything had changed: In February 1942, the U.S. government forced anyone with one-sixteenth or more Japanese ancestry into incarceration camps. In a straightforward and affecting narrative, the authors take readers through a personal journey well embedded in its historical context. The Satos’ experience is recounted alongside the dominant sentiments and political policies of the times. Sidebars further elucidate events, enhanced by photographs and archival documents. One such inset explains the contracting of photographers to paint internment in a positive light. Another examines the euphemistic language used to influence public perceptions of this suspension of civil rights. After the war, Sato pursued a career in nursing in the U.S. Air Force and in public health. A Korean War veteran and president of the Sacramento branch of the Japanese American Citizens League, she has been active as a public speaker, making school visits to educate youth about internment and advocating for human rights. This timely and important story puts a human face on a shameful chapter in American history.
A moving, insightful portrait. (foreword, author’s note, family tree, timeline, glossary, source notes, bibliography, further information, index, photo credits) (Biography. 12-16)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5415-5901-1
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Twenty-First Century/Lerner
Review Posted Online: June 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
Fans of all things martial will echo his “HOOYAH!”—but the troubled aftermath comes in for some attention too.
Abridged but not toned down, this young-readers version of an ex-SEAL sniper’s account (SEAL Team Six, 2011) of his training and combat experiences in Operation Desert Storm and the first Battle of Mogadishu makes colorful, often compelling reading.
“My experiences weren’t always enjoyable,” Wasdin writes, “but they were always adrenaline-filled!” Not to mention testosterone-fueled. He goes on to ascribe much of his innate toughness to being regularly beaten by his stepfather as a child and punctuates his passage through the notoriously hellacious SEAL training with frequent references to other trainees who fail or drop out. He tears into the Clinton administration (whose “support for our troops had sagged like a sack of turds”), indecisive commanders and corrupt Italian “allies” for making such a hash of the entire Somalian mission. In later chapters he retraces his long, difficult physical and emotional recovery from serious wounds received during the “Black Hawk Down” operation, his increasing focus on faith and family after divorce and remarriage and his second career as a chiropractor.
Fans of all things martial will echo his “HOOYAH!”—but the troubled aftermath comes in for some attention too. (acronym/ordinance glossary, adult level reading list) (Memoir. 12-14)Pub Date: May 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-250-01643-0
Page Count: 192
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A solid and captivating look at these remarkable pioneers of modern fiction.
The wild freedom of the imagination and the heart, and the tragedy of lives ended just as success is within view—such a powerful story is that of the Brontë children.
Reef’s gracefully plotted, carefully researched account focuses on Charlotte, whose correspondence with friends, longer life and more extensive experience outside the narrow milieu of Haworth, including her acquaintance with the novelist Elizabeth Gaskell, who became her biographer, revealed more of her personality. She describes the Brontë children’s early losses of their mother and then their two oldest siblings, conveying the imaginative, verbally rich life of children who are essentially orphaned but share both the wild countryside and the gifts of story. Brother Branwell’s tragic struggle with alcohol and opium is seen as if offstage, wounding to his sisters and his father but sad principally because he never found a way to use literature to save himself. Reef looks at the 19th-century context for women writers and the reasons that the sisters chose to publish only under pseudonyms—and includes a wonderful description of the encounter in which Anne and Charlotte revealed their identities to Charlotte’s publisher. She also includes brief, no-major-spoilers summaries of the sisters’ novels, inviting readers to connect the dots and to understand how real-life experience was transformed into fiction.
A solid and captivating look at these remarkable pioneers of modern fiction. (notes and a comprehensive bibliography) (Biography. 12-16)Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-547-57966-5
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 14, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
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