Traci Chee

"A beautiful, painful, and necessary work of historical fiction." --Veera Hiranandani, Newbery Honor winning author of The Night Diary

We Are Not Free

Isabel 

He was a scared kid who died far from home, in a country that wasn't his, a country that took his blood and his weight and his tears and didn't give him back to us. 

Thinking of home? It's like thinking of heaven. Some place you hope you'll end up one day, but good luck, buddy, because you're a soldier, not a saint. 

Inferno

They were American boys once, fearless, patriotic, wholesome, polite, but then the evacuation, then the camps, then segregation, and if these things did not happen to American boys, then they could not be American boys, but they wanted to be something Not American? Okay, then, Japanese.

It feels like that now, like if I drew a self-portrait, I'd draw myself sanded down to the bones, my friends and family peeling from my skeleton.

 Mas, my head. Frankie, my fists. Twitchy, my arms and legs. 

"What, d'you think we were let out of the camps because the FDR woke up one day and realized, oh shit, we was wrong? You can't just lock up a hundred thousand people and call it good? C'mon Minnow, We had to fight for that. We're fighting all the time whether we know it or not."

"But we're already fighting a war out there. Why do we have to fight one in our own country, too?"

The dream: a gardener's son, a college graduate, an engineer, a doctor, a boy, a man who builds things or fixes them. The promise: five times what you can make in Japan. Opportunity, equality, freedom, prosperity. You know you'll be discriminated against. You know you won't be accepted as one of them. Your name is too foreign. Your skin is too yellow. Your tongue skips too lightly over their language. You still go. You won't have citizenship. You won't have property. You might not even have safety. But you still hope. This is the dream. A better life for your children and vour children's children and their children

But that only works in a world that makes sense, and the world of Tule Lake does not make sense. In the world of Tule Lake, you are a citizen and you are an enemy; you are an alien and you are a traitor. You have rights; you have no rights. You have a knife; you have a jar of pickles; you have contraband. In the world of Tule Lake, you are fed and you are starved; you are arrested for rioting, for seeing a movic, for curfew violation; you are guilty until youre proven innocent, and youre never proven innocent because you never get charged; you are guilty, and you have committed no crime

 What can any of us do? They are armed, and there are more of them, and I am just one person, one boy, one stupid boy, one useless boy, who can't even protect himself. the her Bright and dark, bright and dark. The child is still crying. 

outside, our neighbors are lined up with their hands behind their heads.

The sight of it stops me in my tracks. We look like criminals.

They say they' re here for our safety, but no one fels safe when they've got a gun pointed at them. People disappear, are held without charges or trial. And still, we wait by the motor-pool gate, and look, and hope. What else can we do, when we have so little power?

Why won't anybody admit they were wrong? Why won't they just call this what it is? Why does everyone keep lying?

 They said we were citizens. They said we were "dangerous." They told us they were being considerate of our needs. They said it was an "evacuation" and a "migration," not an incarceration. 

They said the camps were full of opportunity. 

They said they weren't violating our rights.

 She's like one of those bonsai trees Mr. Hidekawa used to collect from the Sierras all curved and windblown and beaten down by snow, but graceful and strong. Life's not fair, but she doesn't need it to be fair, because she can take anything life throws at her, and she won't break.

It’s like we’re pulling up our roots, coming out of the dry soil, all our frigid threads breaking.

Four pages of the government trying to trick us into revealing that, oh shit, we really are spies? We didn't even know! Damn, shouldn't have visited those grandparents in Fukuoka, huh? Shouldn't have joined that Japanese theater club. Whoopsy-daisy, guess I'm a traitor now? Good to know! 

Tyranny is locking us up. Tyranny is taking our freedom. Tyranny is right here. Tyranny is American.

The army guys are here to recruit volunteer for Roosevelt's new combat team. See, we dont got liberty, we don't got property, but you better believe we've got the Great American Right to die for a county that doesn't want us.

Outside is the camp, the barbed wire, the guard towers, the city, the country that hates us. But in here, we are together.

"I was scared too. I'm scared a lot." I'm scared that Dad will never come back. I'm scared that Mom will die in this hospital. I'm scared we'll be deported. I'm scared we'll be shot. I'm scared of failing. I'm scared of being trapped.

THINGS THAT DON'T TAKE UP ANY SPACE AT ALL

It builds and builds, getting darker and darker, when all of a sudden it speeds up, and the notes are sparks, they're catching things on fire, the whole street is filled with them. They're explosions. All of the buildings collapse, crashing into the road in heaps of luggage-shaped rubble.

Why should we have to, when we're Americans like anyone else? 

I know the answer, and I hate the answer: because we're Japs, enemy aliens.

Mas stops. His face kind of cracks, and I see that underneath the layers of anger. He's scared. Really scared.

That's five days. Five days to pack up our entire lives.

amelia <3

it was really good except it had soooo many narrators

roro :)

Isabella 

This book is amazing. It's about the experiences of Japanese Americans in internment camps during WWII told in the perspective of teenagers. It was infuriating, heartbreaking, but also inspiring. I was not ready to be completely destroyed by this book. Every character's perspective gave us new insights about the injustices that happened. It explored all kinds of relationships (family, friends, romance). The writing style was phenomenal; I felt connected with every character. This book is so powerful, so impactful. And the author's note... Oh God. This is the kind of the story that will pull your heartstrings. Highly recommend.

Jackie Lu

** spoiler alert **
           If I could really customise this book on Goodreads to go beyond 5 stars, I would give it an infinite amount of stars. This was beautifully written, the way that the charachters thoughts become your own, like as if you’re living out the anger, the sadness, the joy, the pain, it made me feel some way and this is the feeling I love when I get into a good book. This was more than a good book, it was an experience. The amount of times I’d read this on the bus and tear up and stop myself from allowing the tears to roll out, the way I sobbed for Twitchy. It felt like I was there, like I was a host for each of the charachters spirits as they lived through these gruelling, challenging times. As an POC, an Asian and a second generation immigrant myself, I felt so seen and so heard. It sucks that this happened back then, makes me realise that I have it much better today but work still needs to be done. Reading this made me realise that people don’t talk about Japanese relocation camps enough as well as the Japanese battalions that fought for America during WW2, I had only seen photos on Instagrams that posted Western historical content. We do not talk about the sacrifices that Asians and POC have made for the West. I would love to read and see some more ways that they are represented in the future hopefully. I do admit that I did get a bit confused with the charachters every so often but that was most likely due to the fact that I had a few months where I stopped reading. The Japantown kids made me feel like I was part of the group too, and really got me thinking of my own friend groups. Ugh, all in all I loved this book so much I really really liked it, everything about it was amazing. Great storytelling and I really appreciated Chee’s research and just her ability to write well. 1000000000000+/10 I’m seriously so impressed right now I am so in love with this book and i am so sad and heartbroken that i’ve finished it

I have no words except for the fact that I was crying by the end of the book. I loved every second of this book. Every POV. Every story. 

Teeeeeesha

Heather Anne

The first half was questionable and it put me in a reading slump but I did cry so all in all fine

Nadine 

The next time someone asks for a “coming of age” book from a diverse perspective- this is the one I’d put in their hands. Ditto historical fiction. Ditto a war story. A romance. 
Yes there are a lot of POVs and yes it is perhaps a little long but these stories have been long in coming.

Ahaana Bhargava

the way i cried during this book is not even funny 🥺🥺 my brain cannot process the emotions and i dont think i'll ever be able to write a review for this one ahhhh

Paige Green

Disclaimer: I received an e-arc of this book from the publisher. Thanks! All opinions are my own.

Book: We Are Not Free

Author: Traci Cee

Book Series: Standalone

Rating: 5/5

Diversity: Japanese MCs and side characters

Recommended For...: history buffs

Publication Date: September 1, 2020

Genre: YA Historical Fiction

Recommended Age: 14+ (war mention, racism, calling out an author for being racist (Dr. Suess), POWs, romance, and slight sexual content, violence)

Publisher: HMH Books for Young Readers

Pages: 400

Synopsis: From New York Times best-selling and acclaimed author Traci Chee comes We Are Not Free, the collective account of a tight-knit group of young Nisei, second-generation Japanese American citizens, whose lives are irrevocably changed by the mass U.S. incarcerations of World War II.
 
Fourteen teens who have grown up together in Japantown, San Francisco.
 
Fourteen teens who form a community and a family, as interconnected as they are conflicted.
 
Fourteen teens whose lives are turned upside down when over 100,000 people of Japanese ancestry are removed from their homes and forced into desolate incarceration camps.
 
In a world that seems determined to hate them, these young Nisei must rally together as racism and injustice threaten to pull them apart.

Review: For the most part I thought this was an excellent book! I loved the multiple (14) povs and the story of these kids. The book did well to convey the horror of the real life situation Japanese people went through. The book also gave me information that I didn't have due to the poor American education system. I highly urge people to read this. We should know about the horrors we inflicted on our own people.

The only issue I had with the book is that the POV switches can be weird. You start really liking a character then have to go to a new one.

Verdict: Highly recommend and required reading!

Jeni Enjaian

I really wanted to like this book more than I ended up liking it. Chee builds this character-focused narrative of a found family, multiple Japanese American families relocated due to the abhorrent actions that our government took following the attack on Pearl Harbor. The plot weaves its way through all these different characters who each have their own voice. Even with these narrative shifts, Chee does not let the plot thread drop, until we reach the section narrated by Twitchy after he has shipped out to fight in the European theatre. I did not immediately react negatively since I could see how Chee could make this work. However, Twitchy's wartime narration lasts far too long. It kept going beyond the point where it could sustain this delicate woven narrative thread, too far separated from the other characters and the situation back in the United States and the American version of concentration camps. The narrative became a World War II battlefield story which, as much as I love history, does not interest me. I felt such relief when the narrative shifted away from Twitchy, for reasons I will not spoil, but it took so long to pick those threads back up. Chee redeems herself with Tommy's narrative towards the end of the book. I loved that section. So beautifully portrayed. 
I still recommend this book but not as strongly as I would wish to. Over on thestorygraph, I plan to give this 3.75 stars because they appreciate nuanced ratings.

Ainsley Lamont

I thought this book was super unique! 14 teens and 14 different perspectives. I was worried that it would be confusing going from character to character, but Chee did it seamlessly. I also loved how the different perspectives showed different paths. I haven't read many books about Japanese American relocation, so this book was a great addition to my knowledge. Overall, I loved it a lot and would 100% recommend it to everyone. 

*Spoiler*
Although I am a little sad Bette didn't get her romance, her fabulous time in New York made up for it.

Montana Langille

Courtney

Rachel Kelt

Jessie Winchester

Ayla Hawthorne

lykke

Ana Salas

Cat Josephson

jini

* NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST * PRINTZ HONOR BOOK * WALTER HONOR BOOK * From New York Times best-selling and acclaimed author Traci Chee comes We Are Not Free, the collective account of a tight-knit group of young Nisei, second-generation Japanese American citizens, whose lives are irrevocably changed by the mass U.S. incarcerations of World War II. Fourteen teens who have grown up together in Japantown, San Francisco. Fourteen teens who form a community and a family, as interconnected as they are conflicted. Fourteen teens whose lives are turned upside down when over 100,000 people of Japanese ancestry are removed from their homes and forced into desolate incarceration camps. In a world that seems determined to hate them, these young Nisei must rally together as racism and injustice threaten to pull them apart.

We Are Not Free

Reviews

Highlights