Late to the Party Book Club - Episode 7 - They Called Us Enemy

We are joined once again by Deborah Taylor, a Lifetime Achievement Award recipient from the American Library Association as we digest the graphic memoir of actor and activist George Takei's They Called Us Enemy. We can't help but make comparisons to our previous Maus and March episodes as we read through Takei's account of living in Japanese internment camps in the 1940s. Please join us as we experience this journey through the eyes of a child.

 

Tracklist:

3:54 - What kind of impact did telling this story from the perspective of a child have on you as a reader?
14:29 - Learning about events in this memoir for the first time had an impact on us, and how current legislation (in 2021!) is continuing to censor history
26:37 - Takei explaining the differences between the ways the different generations responded government mistreatment, and how his parent's decisions changed the trajectory of their lives in the internment camps
31:36 - The importance of forming a community in the camps, trying to make a home, and the impact Takei's father's role as a Block Manager had on George's relationship with his father
34:37 - How George realized, later in life, that his father had sewn the seeds of activism from a very young age. The intangibles that make a leader, similarities between They Called Us Enemy and March.
48:21 - Takei's later life where he could see the same patterns re-emerging to "otherize" marginalized people, and relating it back to his past allows him to articulate some of the unexplained feelings he had as a child
53:59 - Takei details what it was like to audition for Star Trek with creator/producer Gene Roddenberry
56:06 - Non-fiction and graphic memoirs can reach an audience in ways straight narrative cannot
58:21 - Harmony Becker's artwork was a perfect compliment to this story
1:02:32 - Our takeaways from the book
1:08:48 - You can find Deborah talking all things Harry Potter on The Black Cauldron: A RealzTenisFanz Podcast and in general on Twitter @shackle52

 

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