Farewell to Manzanar
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During World War II the community called Manzanar was hastily created in the high mountain desert country of California, east of the Sierras. Its purpose was to house thousands of Japanese American internees.
One of the first families to arrive was the Wakatsukis, who were ordered to leave their fishing business in Long Beach and take with them only the belongings they could carry. For Jeanne Wakatsuki, a seven-year-old child, Manzanar became a way of life in which she struggled and adapted, observed and grew. For her father it was essentially the end of his life.
In Farewell to Manzanar, Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston recalls life at Manzanar through the eyes of the child she was. She tells of her fear, confusion, and bewilderment as well as the dignity and great resourcefulness of people in oppressive and demeaning circumstances. Jeanne delivers a powerful first-person account that reveals her search for the meaning of Manzanar.
Farewell to Manzanar has become a staple of curriculum in schools and on campuses across the country. Named one of the twentieth century’s 100 best nonfiction books from west of the Rockies by the San Francisco Chronicle.
Graderings en resensies
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Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston (1934-2024) was born in Inglewood, California. At age seven, she and her family were forced from their home by the U.S. government, along with more than 110,000 other Japanese American citizens and immigrants ineligible for citizenship during World War II. The family spent three and a half years at Manzanar in California. She went on to study sociology and journalism at San Jose State University, where she met her husband and cowriter of her memoir Farewell to Manzanar, James D. Houston. The Houstons’ teleplay for the NBC television drama based on Farewell to Manzanar was nominated for an Emmy Award in 1976 and received the prestigious Humanitas Prize in 1977. Jeanne’s widely anthologized essays and short stories were first collected in Beyond Manzanar: Views of Asian American Womanhood. Her works have earned numerous honors, including a United States–Japan Cultural Exchange Fellowship; a Rockefeller Foundation residence at Bellagio, Italy; and a 1984 Wonder Woman Award, given to women over forty who have made outstanding achievements in pursuit of truth and positive social change. In 2000, Jeanne was acknowledged by the City of Los Angeles Japanese American community and named Grand Marshal of the Nisei Week Parade. In 2019, she was inducted into the California Hall of Fame, which celebrates the Golden State’s legends and trailblazers whose achievements have made history and changed the state, the nation, and the world.
James D. Houston (1933–2009) was the author of several novels and nonfiction works exploring the history and cultures of the western United States and the Asia/Pacific region. His works include Snow Mountain Passage, Continental Drift, In the Ring of Fire: A Pacific Basin Journey, and The Last Paradise, which received a 1999 American Book Award for fiction. A former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford, Jim received a National Endowment for the Arts writing grant and a Library of Congress Story Award and traveled to Asia lecturing for the USIS Arts America program.
