Gasa Gasa Girl Goes to Camp / Lily Havey / 2014
In this memoir about growing up in the Japanese internment camp, Lily recreates her childhood perspective to tell a mouth-drying story what it was like to be a young Japanese girl shouldering the gender, racial and class baggage of American and Japanese culture. Lily displays remarkable wisdom and understanding intrinsic to her being, even in her youth, as she mothers her parents, who regularly break under the trauma of their upbringings and adulthoods, leaning on their daughter for comfort. Havey's honesty about the layers of racism, her apt comparisons of the interment camps to Native reservations, all make for a gripping read. All of which is delivered through the mouthpiece of a tween with her passions and frenzy. Interlaced between paragraphs are paintings by Havey, as she's a visual artist by profession. It stuns and baffles me that this book didn't have more national acclaim when it was published. It's truly on par with Solito. 5/5