RUTH ASAWA

A graphic biography that paints a captivating portrait of a Japanese American artist’s road to success against the odds.

The book opens with scenes of a teenage Ruth Asawa (1926-2013) working alongside her family—her Japanese immigrant parents and several brothers and sisters—on their California farm, where she daydreams of becoming an artist. But her reverie is abruptly cut short by news of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Asawa’s father was arrested by the FBI, while her mother and six of the seven Asawa siblings (one was living in Japan) ended up in an incarceration camp in Arkansas. A supportive white teacher helped Asawa get into a teachers’ college in Milwaukee, but when she was denied the chance to graduate because of her ethnicity, Asawa pursued her first love, art, transferring to the experimental Black Mountain College in rural North Carolina. There, she became embedded in a world of contemporary artists who were pushing boundaries, launching her own career as a celebrated sculptor. Nakahira’s lively black-and-white illustrations blend ink drawing with digital coloring. They convey her characters’ emotions as well as the wire sculptures for which Asawa is known. The spare text, which combines invented dialogue with reflections from Asawa’s first-person perspective, highlights with subtlety and touches of humor the obstacles women and Japanese Americans faced in mid-20th-century America.

An inspiring, beautifully rendered book about an artistic dream that came true.