Reviews tagging 'Cancer'

Displacement by Kiku Hughes

12 reviews

klsreads's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

This is a sweet story, a mix of fact and fantasy. Kiku writes and illustrates her journey as a mixed-race, queer Japanase-American unearthing her family history in WWII internment camps. (She refers to interment camps as incarceration camps throughout the book, and rightly so). A magic fog transports her back in time to experience the racism and fearmongering about Asian Americans in the 1940's. Kiku is incarcerated in a room next to her grandmother and great-grandparents and follows their life while cultivating her own in the camp. This is a story about alienation from culture, generational trauma, and the moored "otherness" of multiply marginalized identities. It moved a bit slowly at some points, but it's rich with history, and the art is beautiful. Shamefully, I learned a lot from this short graphic novel. It's a beautiful and real tale of resistance and reconnection. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racial slurs, Police brutality, War, Racism, Grief, Hate crime, Xenophobia, Colonisation, Confinement, and Gaslighting

Moderate: Murder, Death of parent, Violence, Cancer, and Death

kaykitty24's review against another edition

challenging emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

What a wonderful graphic novel! The writer clearly spent lots of time researching Japanese Incarceration. I appreciated their specificity and commentary about the period was beautifully done. Definitely recommend to anyone! Once again, these stories are so necessary and important to talk about! Thank you, Kiku Hughes, from one hapa to another! 😊💞

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racism

Moderate: Cancer, War, Xenophobia, Violence, Death of parent, and Racial slurs

handful_of_frogs's review against another edition

emotional informative reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? N/A
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Death of parent, Racism, Forced institutionalization, War, Xenophobia, Deportation, Police brutality, Cancer, Death, Gun violence, and Medical content

sweetsouthwest's review against another edition

reflective medium-paced

• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Xenophobia

Moderate: Deportation and Confinement

Minor: Islamophobia and Cancer

smilagros's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional informative sad tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

5.0

“ Being in the future meant very little when my education on the past was so limited“. This is one of my favorite graphic novels of all time. I wish more people would talk about it because wow. It was beautiful illustrations and the story was not a history book even though it’s about history. I cannot recommend this graphic novel enough. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Police brutality, Racism, Terminal illness, War, Cancer, Deportation, Confinement, Gaslighting, Hate crime, and Xenophobia

robinks's review against another edition

challenging emotional informative inspiring mysterious reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

I had a feeling this book would be quite sad and informative about history, but I was surprised by the incorporation of current struggles and recognition of various forms of resistance. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racism, Racial slurs, Xenophobia, and Forced institutionalization

Moderate: Cancer, Death of parent, and Murder

Minor: Gun violence, Police brutality, Deportation, War, and Excrement

readingwithkaitlyn's review

emotional informative reflective fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racism, Death, Blood, Murder, Confinement, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Gun violence, Medical content, Deportation, Emotional abuse, Mental illness, Colonisation, Grief, and Hate crime

Minor: Cancer, Xenophobia, Terminal illness, War, and Death of parent

Incarceration camps, disconnection, WWII, Donald Trump, Pearl Habor, Anti-Muslim rhetoric (critical stance), Anti-Black racism, Pearl Habor, Civil Rights Movement, cigarettes, starvation, suffering, poor living conditions.

emily_mh's review

emotional hopeful informative medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

This story is about Kiku, a displaced girl who is landed in the displacement of a whole group of people, namely Japanese-Americans in WWII. She’s on a journey learning about why she feels so disconnected from her Japanese heritage; that it’s because her ancestors were forcefully disconnected from theirs. Her story is about generational trauma and how this can reach through time to affect the present and future. Hughes draws parallels between the generational trauma of Japanese-Americans from WWII, and the generational trauma being generated right now in the US with racist, xenophobic, and Islamophobic immigration policy that lands people in border detainment/incarceration. 

Hughes also emphasises the power of memory, of remembering. Both are galvanising and unifying and instructive. I particularly loved this quote on the topic: “But when a community comes together to demand more, when we do not let trauma stay obscured but bring it up to the surface and remember it together - we can make sure it is not repeated.” I also loved this quote, how it implies the consequence of not remembering the past: “Being from the future meant very little when my education on the past was so limited.” 

Overall, this story provided a massive learning curve for me regarding the incarceration camps. This is the first book I’ve read on them and I learnt so much. The book is written with Kiku as both MC and narrator which works well, as the story she tells is deeply informative and takes you through all kinds of aspects of the incarceration. Specific facts that have stuck with me are the information about No-Nos, and the discussion on how white people used Japanese-Americans’ history of incarceration camps to feed into model-minority myth in the 60s. 

I think that in terms of the medium, there could have been a bit of editing of the panels. There was an excess of landscape and context panels that was unnecessary and led to repetition. But the art style was good; I particularly liked the cleanness of the lines and the fact that the panels weren’t overcrowded. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racism and Xenophobia

Moderate: War, Death, and Grief

Minor: Death of parent, Medical content, Fire/Fire injury, Injury/Injury detail, Terminal illness, Blood, Excrement, Cancer, Islamophobia, Racial slurs, Confinement, Vomit, Drug use, and Gun violence

Major: Japanese-American incarceration camps Moderate: forced separation fro loved ones, loss of a loved one Minor: nuclear warfare

brookey8888's review

informative inspiring reflective fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

This is a really great graphic novel if you want an easier to digest history of the Japanese Camps. I did learn a lot and it also refreshed the knowledge I did have. At first I was confused about the going back in time but how the author tied that in was good. There was also LGBTQ+ representation. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Cancer, Colonisation, Death, Death of parent, Forced institutionalization, Gaslighting, Grief, Gun violence, Islamophobia, Murder, Racism, Religious bigotry, and Xenophobia

peachani's review

emotional inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

Wonderful story with a twist I didn't expect. The novel does a great job of tying together the plight of Japanese-Americans and others in the US, reminding us that we must fight not only for ourselves, but for others as well.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement, Forced institutionalization, Racism, and Xenophobia

Moderate: Cancer, Death, and Grief

Minor: Blood, Murder, Police brutality, Religious bigotry, and Violence