deerstalker
There is a Zora Neal Hurston quote that seems etched into my mind whenever I think about this year, whenever I think about 2020. It is simply: “There are years that ask questions and years that answer.” This has been an incredibly long year, for so many of us it seems a lifetime has come and passed before our eyes: the pandemic, the call heard around the world to end police brutality, the damages from natural disasters like fires and hurricanes…and all the tragedy. It’s been a hard year that’s not even over yet.
Yet, what has helped keep me sane? Reading. 2020 has been a year of so many great debuts, especially in the graphic novel market. Published in August, Kuku’s Hughes’ Displacement caught my eyes: “A teenager is pulled back in time to witness her grandmother’s experiences in World War II-era Japanese internment camps.” I was intrigued and wanted to read more. Soon, I found myself immersed into a narrative about family ties, the stories that don’t always get shared, and the immense power that both memory and trauma can hold in life–over generations.
INTERRUPTED
Displacement opens to the author and her mother visiting an older section of San Francisco, opening to see a glimpse of where Hughes’ grandmother once grew up. There’s disappointment from mom as it is a place that…just doesn’t exist anymore. There’s sighing and walking about to find ancient history: the house where the grandmother and her immigrant parents lived until 1942 before they were forced from home and into the American Incarceration camps that many Japanese Americans were made to go. Many never saw their former homes again. Mother and daughter continue walking, the author feels out of place as it she has no connection to this place, to the history contained here and she feels distanced from the branch of her family that she’s never knew that once lived here.
It is a strange, somber, and unsettling tone that sets the graphic novel and even more so she experiences the first of what she later calls the fog–that transports her back in time. The first of many “displacements” from her current day to a time from an era past where she’s transported to a time where she sees her grandmother, young, talented, and on a crash course to be a part of American History that doesn’t always get talked about. Later after that brief interlude to the past, Hughes is happy to go back home, as they had been visiting California.
She’s happy to put distance between her and that young woman, her grandmother, whom she never got to meet. She’s never had the courage to inquire and learn more about the people who came before her, especially her grandmother. This is not cowardly. There are lives of people who don’t get talked about too often in our families–the trauma and circumstances that wrap around their lives impact ours and our parents, too. Also…sometimes, there is never the right time to ask. Yet to her surprise, once home she’s assaulted by more fog, being displaced again and again and for longer times to the past.
ATTENTION
Once Hughes’ displacements in time get longer and longer, she finds herself face to face with the past. She has to wake up and go to bed in the very camps where Japanese American were incarcerated and see first-hand the levels of injustices that were thrown her way. This is the true heart of the book, I believe. This is where the graphic novel’s narrative truly shines and captures a young woman struggling to understand what she previously thought was ancient history and having to deal with the dehumanizing actions done to people.
Reimagining what life was like during these years is trending troubled water that wrenched my heart as a reader. These were immensely difficult times, and the author fleshes out life in these camps, the young people she came to know–their personalities, their hopes and dreams. The ones who resisted in quiet and large ways. The ways families were strained and how people in general preserved.
What cannot be understated is the tackling of Hughes’ heritage as a biracial American here in this book and the threads she pulls together connecting her and the story she always wanted to write. One illustrative example is one of her earliest displacements when she finds herself in a line waiting to be shipped off, she stumbles and is helped by a young man also in line. When he asks if she’s in the right place, she’s shook but reflects that even if she had been there during that time, she’d be waiting in line with her mom. But no, she would not have deserved to be there. No one in that time period did.
Later during her longest time displacement, she privately asks her roommate, Aiko, my favorite character-a bespectacled older teenage girl, to teach her Japanese–she is fiercely opposed to it. Other than it being forbidden, she thinks it useless, growing up with Japanese American immigrant parents. Teaching Hughes will be useless in this country where even the very sound of the spoken language would be seen as fascist by most of the country. Hughes is disappointed and expecting the younger crew to be more passionate about their heritage. It is something she starts to understand herself but is saddened anyway–deep down she wants to connect deeper with her roots and learn more about her family.
HOME
As one of the best graphic novels published this year, Hughes’ debut carries so much depth, so much weight. I cannot wait to start seeing this work in classrooms and on syllabi across the country. What I know for sure is that Hughes’ Displacement is a deeply personal, thoughtful, and careful work that has been in the works for a long time. In the afterword, the author writes that this book is a work of fact, fiction, history, and memory…so there were people she wrote and illustrated to flesh out the pages of this powerful read: what was on the minds of the youth in these camps?
How did people respond to democracy and having a say in how they were treated? Where there queer people existing in these places? How did the people make life just a little more bearable during these times? Hughes’ artwork fills the pages recreating this time period and there are scenes that could light up the night sky with the depth of emotion she places on the page. Scenes like when receiving a small and unexpected gift that inspires a well of gratitude and connection to the people around her to scenes of being conflicted about a “loyalty questionnaire” passed across the camps that terrified and split whole generations and communities because of the uncertainty of the times were brilliantly places for bookmarks and, sometimes, tears on my end.
Our connection to the past is not lost, and Hughes brings the book to a beautiful close that is closure for her own family’s story about the parts of history filled with silence and sometimes, shame–and a fierce desire to not forget the past in order for similar tragedies and atrocities not to be repeated. Not now. And not in the future. At least, not without any of us not standing up for what we know is not right.
For books by authors and illustrators of the Asian Diaspora, Displacement is a newer, worthy addition. For literature detailing the experiences of Japanese Americans: the Issei, the first generation-people who emigrated from Japan to make this country their home and their children, the second generation, the Nisei who made up the first generation born in the U.S., Displacement is well researched with much care. For lovers of graphic novels, history buffs, students, and the ones ever curious about the lives of those before us, Displacement is a promising book to have and immerse yourself in.
Displacement ends on a note of closure for Hughes’ family and shared histories, but the graphic novel also ends on a call to action for the readers. This book is a layered and timely graphic novel that I count as one of the best that I’ve read all year. It is also one that I keep rereading, because I love that the story feels like a coming age tale but one dropped into history of the past. The author is reclaiming parts of herself through her mother, through her grandmother and even her great-grandmother and noting that memories are powerful things, powerful tools to take with us into the future while never forgetting the past and the people we’ve come from.
SCORE: 9.7 Very Cherished Carvings Found Once Again Out Of 10
Kiku Hughes is a cartoonist and illustrator based in the Seattle area. Her work has been featured in Beyond Anthology volumes 1 and 2, Short Box #6 and the Alloy Anthology. She creates stories about identity, queer romance, and compassionate sci-fi. Displacement is her first graphic novel, and it is a story she’s wanted to share for as long as she can remember. See more of her on Twitter and on her personal website. She also put together this AMAZING playlist inspired by the book here!
Read our site’s other literature reviews on our Literature tag.
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The post ‘Displacement’ is the Timely and Necessary Graphic Novel You Needed To Read Yesterday appeared first on Black Nerd Problems.
There is a Zora Neal Hurston quote that seems etched into my mind whenever I think about this year, whenever I think about 2020. It is simply: “There are years that ask questions and years that answer.” This has been an incredibly long year, for so many of us it seems a lifetime has come and passed before our eyes: the pandemic, the call heard around the world to end police brutality, the damages from natural disasters like fires and hurricanes…and all the tragedy. It’s been a hard year that’s not even over yet.
Yet, what has helped keep me sane? Reading. 2020 has been a year of so many great debuts, especially in the graphic novel market. Published in August, Kuku’s Hughes’ Displacement caught my eyes: “A teenager is pulled back in time to witness her grandmother’s experiences in World War II-era Japanese internment camps.” I was intrigued and wanted to read more. Soon, I found myself immersed into a narrative about family ties, the stories that don’t always get shared, and the immense power that both memory and trauma can hold in life–over generations.
INTERRUPTED
Displacement opens to the author and her mother visiting an older section of San Francisco, opening to see a glimpse of where Hughes’ grandmother once grew up. There’s disappointment from mom as it is a place that…just doesn’t exist anymore. There’s sighing and walking about to find ancient history: the house where the grandmother and her immigrant parents lived until 1942 before they were forced from home and into the American Incarceration camps that many Japanese Americans were made to go. Many never saw their former homes again. Mother and daughter continue walking, the author feels out of place as it she has no connection to this place, to the history contained here and she feels distanced from the branch of her family that she’s never knew that once lived here.
It is a strange, somber, and unsettling tone that sets the graphic novel and even more so she experiences the first of what she later calls the fog–that transports her back in time. The first of many “displacements” from her current day to a time from an era past where she’s transported to a time where she sees her grandmother, young, talented, and on a crash course to be a part of American History that doesn’t always get talked about. Later after that brief interlude to the past, Hughes is happy to go back home, as they had been visiting California.
She’s happy to put distance between her and that young woman, her grandmother, whom she never got to meet. She’s never had the courage to inquire and learn more about the people who came before her, especially her grandmother. This is not cowardly. There are lives of people who don’t get talked about too often in our families–the trauma and circumstances that wrap around their lives impact ours and our parents, too. Also…sometimes, there is never the right time to ask. Yet to her surprise, once home she’s assaulted by more fog, being displaced again and again and for longer times to the past.
ATTENTION
Once Hughes’ displacements in time get longer and longer, she finds herself face to face with the past. She has to wake up and go to bed in the very camps where Japanese American were incarcerated and see first-hand the levels of injustices that were thrown her way. This is the true heart of the book, I believe. This is where the graphic novel’s narrative truly shines and captures a young woman struggling to understand what she previously thought was ancient history and having to deal with the dehumanizing actions done to people.
Reimagining what life was like during these years is trending troubled water that wrenched my heart as a reader. These were immensely difficult times, and the author fleshes out life in these camps, the young people she came to know–their personalities, their hopes and dreams. The ones who resisted in quiet and large ways. The ways families were strained and how people in general preserved.
What cannot be understated is the tackling of Hughes’ heritage as a biracial American here in this book and the threads she pulls together connecting her and the story she always wanted to write. One illustrative example is one of her earliest displacements when she finds herself in a line waiting to be shipped off, she stumbles and is helped by a young man also in line. When he asks if she’s in the right place, she’s shook but reflects that even if she had been there during that time, she’d be waiting in line with her mom. But no, she would not have deserved to be there. No one in that time period did.
Later during her longest time displacement, she privately asks her roommate, Aiko, my favorite character-a bespectacled older teenage girl, to teach her Japanese–she is fiercely opposed to it. Other than it being forbidden, she thinks it useless, growing up with Japanese American immigrant parents. Teaching Hughes will be useless in this country where even the very sound of the spoken language would be seen as fascist by most of the country. Hughes is disappointed and expecting the younger crew to be more passionate about their heritage. It is something she starts to understand herself but is saddened anyway–deep down she wants to connect deeper with her roots and learn more about her family.
HOME
As one of the best graphic novels published this year, Hughes’ debut carries so much depth, so much weight. I cannot wait to start seeing this work in classrooms and on syllabi across the country. What I know for sure is that Hughes’ Displacement is a deeply personal, thoughtful, and careful work that has been in the works for a long time. In the afterword, the author writes that this book is a work of fact, fiction, history, and memory…so there were people she wrote and illustrated to flesh out the pages of this powerful read: what was on the minds of the youth in these camps?
How did people respond to democracy and having a say in how they were treated? Where there queer people existing in these places? How did the people make life just a little more bearable during these times? Hughes’ artwork fills the pages recreating this time period and there are scenes that could light up the night sky with the depth of emotion she places on the page. Scenes like when receiving a small and unexpected gift that inspires a well of gratitude and connection to the people around her to scenes of being conflicted about a “loyalty questionnaire” passed across the camps that terrified and split whole generations and communities because of the uncertainty of the times were brilliantly places for bookmarks and, sometimes, tears on my end.
Our connection to the past is not lost, and Hughes brings the book to a beautiful close that is closure for her own family’s story about the parts of history filled with silence and sometimes, shame–and a fierce desire to not forget the past in order for similar tragedies and atrocities not to be repeated. Not now. And not in the future. At least, not without any of us not standing up for what we know is not right.
For books by authors and illustrators of the Asian Diaspora, Displacement is a newer, worthy addition. For literature detailing the experiences of Japanese Americans: the Issei, the first generation-people who emigrated from Japan to make this country their home and their children, the second generation, the Nisei who made up the first generation born in the U.S., Displacement is well researched with much care. For lovers of graphic novels, history buffs, students, and the ones ever curious about the lives of those before us, Displacement is a promising book to have and immerse yourself in.
Displacement ends on a note of closure for Hughes’ family and shared histories, but the graphic novel also ends on a call to action for the readers. This book is a layered and timely graphic novel that I count as one of the best that I’ve read all year. It is also one that I keep rereading, because I love that the story feels like a coming age tale but one dropped into history of the past. The author is reclaiming parts of herself through her mother, through her grandmother and even her great-grandmother and noting that memories are powerful things, powerful tools to take with us into the future while never forgetting the past and the people we’ve come from.
SCORE: 9.7 Very Cherished Carvings Found Once Again Out Of 10
Kiku Hughes is a cartoonist and illustrator based in the Seattle area. Her work has been featured in Beyond Anthology volumes 1 and 2, Short Box #6 and the Alloy Anthology. She creates stories about identity, queer romance, and compassionate sci-fi. Displacement is her first graphic novel, and it is a story she’s wanted to share for as long as she can remember. See more of her on Twitter and on her personal website. She also put together this AMAZING playlist inspired by the book here!
Read our site’s other literature reviews on our Literature tag.
Want to get Black Nerd Problems updates sent directly to you? Sign up here!
Follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram!
The post ‘Displacement’ is the Timely and Necessary Graphic Novel You Needed To Read Yesterday appeared first on Black Nerd Problems.
Source: Robin Marchant / Getty
In a preview for the newest episode of The Real Housewives of Atlanta, Drew Sidora‘s husband, Ralph Pittman, makes it known that what’s he’s seeking from their marriage is “respect and sex.” The couple, who sat together for a marriage counseling session, have a tense interaction about his expectations in their relationship and his feelings concerning her mother’s treatment of Drew’s father.
In the clip, the couple is sitting side by side across from their counselor. In an outdoor setting, the two begin to air out their dirty laundry in what looks to be a juicy upcoming episode.
When the counselor asks, “So Ralph, what would be your goals that need to happen in your relationship?” he responds, “respect and sex.”
Drew is then seen putting her head down and just smiling out of pure embarrassment. The counselor encourages Ralph to explain himself, asking, “What’s the preferred frequency for that?”
“I would say minimum, minimum three times a week,” he said. “And I think that’s really, truly, very, very conservative.”
Then, when he’s asked what respect would look like in the relationship with his wife, Ralph throws major shade saying, “Respect would be someone not emasculating me. Drew tries to treat me like her mom treated her dad, and that’s never going to work with me.”
After that, the counselor asked Drew for her opinion on whether Ralph’s thoughts on her mother’s behavior were valid. While shaking her head, Drew got understandably defensive.
“That’s not true. I mean I allow him to be the man that he is,” she said. “You know I see who Ralph is. I know he’s not my dad and I’ve had to let go of those expectations.”
Ralph, who was silently laughing as Drew spoke, then briefly put his hand on her shoulder. In a sarcastic and patronizing tone, he looked to her and said, “Okay.”
Drew seemed offended by the gesture and asked him, “What was that?” to which he replied, “You looked like you were about to cry.”
Looking less than comforting or caring as he pretended to console his wife, Drew told him, “That wasn’t even real.”
With a little bit of bickering and more dismissiveness from Ralph towards Drew and her feelings, the clip ends. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen the awkward and contentious dynamic between the couple, but it’s always quite cringe-y to watch. While Ralph has already proven himself as a domineering and alpha male type of husband, here’s to hoping the couple’s counseling might make him change, or at least help him be a little bit nicer to Drew.
Happy Holidays to all our patient and loyal listeners! Like James Brown's infamous band, The JB's, let's keep this post tight and out of sight! Check out our post Xmas edition of Afronerd Radio's Grindhouse broadcast-airing this Sunday at 6pm eastern on BTalk 100. The topics to be unpacked are as follows: our impressions of the Christmas day release of two films (Soul and Wonder Woman 1984) that were slated for an early 2020 theatrical release but ended up on their respective streaming platforms due to the pandemic; yet another unfortunate death....John Fletcher a.k.a. Ecstasy from legendary classic hip hop act, Whodini passes at 56;
Did we ever talk about the fascinating and different animated landscape (Aztec/Mesoamerican culture) of Crunchyroll's Onyx Equinox and recently completed first season?; Dburt has apparently renewed his interest in anime during our current national difficulties (i.e. One Piece, Fire Force; Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?, The Seven Deadly Sins, Haikyu!! & more); more charges of racism are being levied against the tech giant Google, especially as it concerns HBCU recruitment; Lastly, as we approach the end of an extremely stressful year and election season, we will discuss the highlights of 2020 in the black blerd space as well as thoughts about what to expect in '21.
*One thing that Dburt is doing (finally) is investing in cryptocurrency, courtesy of Roundlyx. We would implore our followers to investigate, discern and then explore by using our referral code: afro-87A4BF
Call us LIVE at 508-645-0100. AFTER CLICKING ON THE HIGHLIGHTED LINK, GO DIRECTLY TO AFRONERD RADIO!!!
or This link below.....
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Now that humanity has a decent shot at sending people to Mars, it’s as good a time as any to think about the kinds of lifestyle challenges the Red Planet will pose. For instance, time itself will have to change in a significant way. As this new video from YouTube channel RealLifeLore explains, people will have to rethink what a “year” or “day” means to them. (Kind of like what happened in 2020.)
RealLifeLore has produced countless similar explainers, covering everything from how large the Pacific Ocean is to what Earth will look like in the case of catastrophic climate change. (Spoiler alert: like Tatooine.)
In this explainer, the channel notes that keeping time on Mars will be similar to but also “starkly different” from keeping time here on Earth. That’s essentially because Earth and Mars take different amounts of time to orbit the Sun. Likewise, while they both rotate on their axes, they do so at different rates.
RealLifeLore
These changes result in the Martian day (or Sol) being slightly longer than Earth’s, at 24 hours and 37 minutes. Mars’ year being much longer, at 687 Earth days. However, a “second” is equal on both planets; a second defined as a particular number of radiation cycles of a cesium-133 atom, which remains unchanged anywhere in the universe. But they still end up requiring different senses of how long a “day” or “year” is.
RealLifeLore
Along with developing a new sense of the length of days or years, settlers will also need a new calendar. For this, RealLifeLore notes The Space Science Institute has already set one up. The Institute’s calendar for Mars begins on April 11, 1955 here on Earth; making that day January 1 of the first Martian year. Which would mean as we celebrate New Years Eve 2021 on Earth, Mars is still finishing out its 35th calendar month. Which is confusing, until you remember the Martian “years” are much longer. And, as Einstein famously said, that time is just a “stubbornly persistent” illusion.
RealLifeLore
The post Here’s How We’ll Keep Time on Mars appeared first on Nerdist.