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Book Review: Nisei Daughter

Regina Paulose

We question who we are. We will erase ourselves at no cost to belong in a place that will end up just boxing us up and putting us somewhere else. When we think we are home, they think our home is elsewhere. When we think we are protected by freedom, we are actually marred with more inequalities and given solutions that fix a problem for a moment, an hour, but not for a lifetime.

Nisei Daughter is a personal narrative account of the author, Monica Sone, who is a Japanese-American. She vibrantly tells her story about growing up in the Seattle Waterfront district in the 1930s. Of course, within the first couple of chapters in the book, the reader will be touched deeply by the pain and suffering that Ms. Sone and 77,000 persons of Japanese ancestry went through because of the WWII and the U.S. government’s effort to succeed in the war at all costs.

For those people who want an account of what happened to the Japanese-Americans in America at that time, and what the cost of freedom came to be for this group of people, I highly recommend you read this book. While there are many things that are descriptive of the 1930’s and the Japanese culture, Sone’s narrative rings true of events in America today. Her narrative takes us from what it is to be in the midst of a war, to be in the group that is being targeted, and to have to fight for a right that you already have as an American: the right to justice.