During a time where civil rights of certain American citizens are being pushed against, and when an administration is trying to ban people from different ethnic and religious groups, DISPLACEMENT feels like a relevant tale. What I liked most about this book is that Hughes finds a way to take a modern day perspective, one that many teens today would have, and transports it back to the time of Japanese Internment, and lets the audience see it the way that the protagonist would. Hughes credits KINDRED by Octavia Butler in her acknowledgements, and I definitely see the influence, but I also see similarities to Jane Yolen's THE DEVIL'S ARITHMETIC. Hughes is able to put a serious and heavy history lesson into a very readable and understandable text for teenagers, and I really loved how she incorporated modern day disgraces of our country's policies and leaders and shows how we are, in many ways, repeating history all over again. She breaks down the Internment policies and experiences of her grandmother, as well as many Japanese Americans living on the West Coast during this time.

DISPLACEMENT is a book that I would encourage educators to put in their collections and curriculums. It has a lot to say in a way that many people can understand and relate to.

While visiting San Francisco with her mother, Kiku travels the streets and stories of her family's past. Bored and angsty as many teenage girls are, she is swept up by a fog into the 1940s where being Japanese of any fraction was a crime punishable to an undetermined sentence at the internment camps (which Hughes names incarceration camps to combat the erasure of the real and traumatic history of them). She travels alongside her grandmother and witnesses what it was like to live through this awful experience.

Nor does this issue remain in the past, as Hughes illustrates drawing parallels to the WWII camps to the ICE detention centers during Trump's presidency. Incarceration camps, as the author rightly calls them, exist globally to this day (check out China's incarceration of the Uyghur Muslims in the past few years...). The themes of racial oppression, generational racial trauma, and advocating for one's rights will resonate with audiences reading in 2020.

I'd describe this book as a mix of Octavia Butler's "Kindred" and George Takei's autobiography, "They Called Us Enemy", but for a middle-grade audience. The layout is simple to follow for younger graphic novel readers and the artwork is aesthetically pleasing. This would be a great book to introduce into the classroom for a unit on race or social justice.

When beginning Displacement, I started with an expectation that I would learn something important about a difficult and relevant time period in American history. I did not expect to have my heart broken into a million pieces and be sitting here sobbing in my office. I share this as an example of just how poignant, how hard-hitting, and how important of a read Displacement is in this broken, unjust world in which we live, I cannot possibly recommend reading this enough. Also the art is both realistic and stunning. Please read.

I received a temporary digital advanced copy of Displacement by Kiku Hughes from NetGalley, First Second Books, and the author in exchange for an honest review.

Kiku visits San Francisco with her mother; on the last day of their trip, the two look for Kiku's grandmother's home. Unfortunately, her former home has been turned into a mall. While her mother is in the mall Kiku waits outside and is transported, or displaced, into the past where she sees her grandmother playing violin. She is quickly transported back to the present; however, the experience rocks Kiku. She realizes she knows little of her grandmother and of her time in Japanese internment camps during the Second World War. Kiku is transported back in time two more times, each time learning more and more of the horrors Japanese Americans were faced with in the internment camps, and the resolve they built while in the camps.

Displacement is a gorgeous graphic novel. The author deeply researched Japanese internment camps and pulled from her own grandmother's experiences to write the novel. I highly recommend the novel for any age group, and to teachers to use in their classrooms as it is engaging, historically accurate, and makes connections to today's society and current administration.

This is a historical graphic novel about a teen traveling in time and learning about her family’s experience in a Japanese-American internment camp. It's an important and insightful read about a dark time in our history. It will not only inform young readers, but may also spark ideas about how they can take action to make change in the world.

I appreciate that this author pulls no punches and calls these camps what they were: Japanese Incarceration Camps. Words matter!

A really captivating historical fantasy story. The main character goes back to her grandmother's time in the WWII camps.

A worthwhile read, beautifully illustrated. Eager to put this in my students' hands.

While I appreciate the author’s message about injustice, the delivery was lacking. Kiku is “displaced” to WWII era Japanese internment camps where she experiences the trials and tribulations her grandmother faced while at Tanforan and then Topaz. The use of time travel was never fully realized.

"The persecution of a marginalized group of people is never just one act of violence - it's a condemnation of generations to come who live with the ongoing consequences. We may suffer from these traumas, but we can also use them to help others and fight for justice in our own time."

I just loved this graphic novel. As a teacher, I want to share this with all of my students. As a book lover, I want to share this with the book community who will appreciate the beautiful, flowing words and images. As an Asian-American, I want to share this with the world.

I especially appreciated the way our narrator is almost completely ignorant to her families history and the treatment of Japanese-Americans immediately following the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Why did I appreciate this "character flaw"? Because ya'll... it was relatable. This stuff is not taught in school. How do we go through the entire education system in America and graduate with so little knowledge of our countries dark history? We can't just sweep all of the ugly past under an imaginary rug. Like Kiku Hughes explains in this novel, we need to have an understanding and knowledge of the wrongs of the past in order to prevent them from happening again and to STAND UP for justice.

This is an incredible and necessary work. I will be working to get it into my school's curriculum.

In this graphic novel, Hughes brings to life an ugly chapter of American history in a completely unique way. Through the perspective of a modern teen, we learn about the Japanese internment camps in the US during World War II and how the cycle of racism continues to this day. I've read a lot about these camps, but this is one of the first stories I've read that showed how people tried to rebuild their lives after. It's an important part of the story, and Hughes does a fantastic job connecting the dots through the generations of this family. The elegantly simple illustrations really contributed to the feeling of being a visitor in time, taking a glimpse into something that was all too real to the people living it. My only quibble is that the main character felt a bit flat, especially compared to her vividly imagined companions. Even then, I could see Kiku being a relatable protagonist with whom to experience this story.

I would describe Displacement as a blend of fiction and creative nonfiction. The author Kiku Hughes merges biography, history, and speculative fiction through time travel to explore the multilayered experiences of Japanese Internment in the United States. The protagonist also named Kiku is transported from the present to the past from the evacuation of Japanese and Japanese Americans to their placement in internment camps. In reading the captions and dialogue among the different characters, I felt that the narrative rendered a revisionist history of internment by uncovering silences, defeats, and acts of personal and collective resistance against government control. Hughes' illustrations capture the moment by moment reactions of the characters as well as political commentary on the mistreatment of immigrants under the Trump administration. In addition, she integrates a narrative of queer love and representation and family photographs which adds texture to the story. This graphic novel not only serves as a teaching tool for readers to learn about the injustice of the Japanese Internment but also as a gift to former internees who have passed on and those who are still living. As Nikkei, Hughes offers other descendants inspiration to research their family histories.

I really liked this book. I did not love it as much as I thought I would but it was good. It was hard to follow in spots but overall the story is thought provoking and compelling. Excellent choice for a library.

Once upon a time, I wrote a short story for middle school social studies that involved a girl time traveling back to WWII era Japan to learn about the war from the inside. This was very tangentially similar, but of course infinitely better.

Fascinating graphic novel about Japanese-American internment, a topic that is under-taught in history classes. Having us follow Kiku, who is herself learning about family history she hasn't been privy to, is a compelling and personalizing way of telling the story.

This is a beautiful book that tells the important story of the Japanese internment camps through the eyes of a descendant.

I appreciate the author telling the story of her family's experience during the Japanese Internment. However, the time travel seemed clunky and unnecessary and was never fully explained. A fictional character from the same time period could have conveyed the story better, I think. Also, the present-day mother/daughter conversations, while insightful, seemed didactic and forced. Ultimately, I think a straight information retelling of family history would have worked much better.

Based in the author's own familial history, this part-magical, part-historical, part-memoir graphic novel is very current. It blends a lot of elements, and quite honestly, it sounds like it wouldn't really work as a book--that it'd be too preachy, too personal to be accessible, too fantastical to be historical, too gimmicky--there were a lot of ways this book could have gone wrong, but everything about this book is right.

Kiku's mother hasn't talked much about her own mother, Kiku's grandmother, who spent time in the internment camps for Japanese-Americans during WWII. When she and her mother take a trip to see the house that Kiku's grandmother grew up in, Kiku finds herself 'displaced,' traveling through time and space, to be a witness to and participant in her grandmother's experience as a teenager sent to the camps. The artwork of this book tells the story in a clear and striking way, and the juxtaposition of the political climate and racism prevalent during WWII with current events identifies, what I think, is a real staying power for this title.

This is instantly one of my favorite graphic memoirs/graphic novels. I have not felt so emotionally connected to a graphic work in quite some time. I want this book to win all the awards and to get all the hype. I can't wait to make my coworkers read this book, to make my family and friends read this book. I'll be pushing this book on everyone for years to come, and I'm so looking forward to what Kiku Hughes writes next.

The best YA graphic novel of the year for me so far. I came for the initial story, but this memoir turned into a huge history lesson for me and my daughter who read it with me. I loved the illustrations and listening to history from the point of view of the characters in the novel. I was lucky enough to see Kiku speak during a Library Journal virtual even so I did have a little preview to rope me into the story, otherwise, I might not have seen it though it is fabulous, it is a YA graphic novel of which I usually fall behind reading being so focused on kids' stuff. From personal experience, this is a good one to read with your kids and open to discussions on race, discrimination, and familial history. Check it out!

Kiku is a high schooler on vacation with her mother in San Francisco, trying to find their family home in Japantown, when she gets swept back in time to her grandmother's violin recital. She travels back and forth a few more times before she is sent back to 1942, right as her grandmother's family is being shipped out to an incarceration camp. She is "stuck" in the past for a year, living in the camps alongside other Nikkei and her grandmother, who she doesn't have the courage to speak to. Back in the present, Kiku and her mother decide to research more of the family's history and the history of the Topaz, Utah camp, and to become activists against the camps at the U.S. Border for Latinx immigrants.

I love the element of using time travel to pull us into a historical event. Kiku has a connection to the incarceration camps but admits she knows nothing about them prior to her displacement, so may put her on an even playing field with many readers who don't always get the opportunity to study Japanese Internment in their history classes. This book would be a great parallel read to George Takei's They Called Us Enemy because of the subject matter, but also be Kiku's journey follows the same path as George's - Tanforan to Topaz, Utah. While Takei's book came out as the camps at the U.S. border were being established, and thus didn't get to draw any comparisons, Displacement doesn't shy away from the opportunity to show the immigrant camps, and even sprinkles in throughout the book some of the rhetoric used by the Trump administration that echoes rhetoric used during World War II with Japanese Americans.

Hughes' illustrations are simple and clean, and beautifully colored. The past has a brown palette, referencing the dust of the camps and the dust that precedes displacement. The present has a teal palette, and occasionally the two are mixed together. Character's clothing have the pop of color to contrast with the brown backgrounds, drawing the eye in to them on the page.
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First Second rates this book for ages 12-18, and that seems appropriate. Younger elementary audiences have probably not gotten into World War II in their course of study, so they may lack the background knowledge to contextualize this novel. However, for those young readers who have knowledge about WWII, there is nothing in this novel that would make it inappropriate for them.

Sara's Rating: 10/10
​Suitability Level: Grades 6-12

This review was made possible with an advanced reader copy from the publisher through Net Galley. This graphic novel will be on sale August 18, 2020.

Read more graphic novel reviews at www.graphiclibrary.org.

I loved this graphic novel. In a time where racist behaviour is being shamed, here is a new take on an old story. During the second World War, Japanese Americans were rounded up and moved to internment camps. These were citizens of the USA. Many of them born and raised there, yet the advent of war meant that they were treated with suspicion.

We meet Kiku, who with her mum is on a trip to a museum, sitting outside she is overcome with a strange feeling, mist and clouds swirl around her and she is transported or displaced, back to the time when her grandmother, a quiet introverted girl, was sent to internment camps with her family in the 1940s. Kiku is caught up in the crowd, next minute she is on a train with the rest of the people and becomes part of the camp population. She tries to fit in, tries to make contact with her grandmother and comes to realise how difficult the camps were. She is stuck there for a long time, unable to get back to her real time. She starts to fit in, makes friends and and becomes part of life in the camp.

This is a treasure of a graphic novel, one that will take you on a journey to a time in history which isn’t spoken of often. A side of the second world war not fought on the front lines but in rural USA.

The art in this graphic novel is stellar, it complements the story so well, the colours are evocative and moody. This is a thing of beauty. A treasure. Thanks to Netgalley for giving me access to this lovely book.

Great for readers who enjoyed They Called Us the Enemy by George Takei. Loosely based on the narrator’s family experience with internment during WWII, it was an interesting, well-paced mix of fantasy and truth. It incorporates historical fiction with relevant and timely concepts surrounding immigration and national identity. I would definitely recommend this to my patrons.

I was given a free copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Kiku and her mother visit her grandmother's home while on vacation - ironically on Donald Trump's first day in office. This leads Kiku to ask questions about her grandmother - realizing that she knows little of her story. That evening, through magical realism, Kiku is transported to the Japanese internment camps where she meets her grandmother and others being detained. She goes back to today's world and asks her mother for more info on her grandmother. Later, she is transported back to the internment camps and witnesses/experiences what her grandmother and other Japanese prisoners did. Illustrations and story are equally lovely. #netgalley, #firstsecondbooks #familyrelationships #japaneseinternment #dontrepeathistory.#immigration