No-No Boy - John Okada, Ruth Ozeki

Ruth Ozeki, John Okada, Lawson Fusao Inada

Category: Historical Fiction

Tags: Historical Fiction, Literature

First published in 1956, No-No Boy was virtually ignored by a public eager to put World War II and the Japanese internment behind them. It was not until the mid-1970s that a new generation of Japanese American writers and scholars recognized the novels importance and popularized it as one of literatures most powerful testaments to the Asian American experience., No-No Boy tells the story of Ichiro Yamada, a fictional version of the real-life no-no boys. Yamada answered no twice in a compulsory government questionnaire as to whether he would serve in the armed forces and swear loyalty to the United States. Unwilling to pledge himself to the country that interned him and his family, Ichiro earns two years in prison and the hostility of his family and community when he returns home to Seattle., As Ozeki writes, Ichiros obsessive, tormented voice subverts Japanese postwar model-minority stereotypes, showing a fractured community and one mans threnody of guilt, rage, and blame as he tries t