Take What You Can Carry
Although two boys grow up in vastly different times and locations, their lives intersect in more ways than one as they discover compassion, develop loyalty and find renewal in the most surprising of places. By the creator of Blindspot. Original.
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It was the title this time and not the cover itself that caught my eye. Reminiscent of Only What We Could Carry (a book everyone should read) my hand went to pick it up without even really thinking about it. As I suspected it did deal with the internment of Japanese Americans, but with a bit of a twist.
The book flips back and forth from a 1978 Chicago suburb and 1941-1944 California. In 1978 we follow Kyle in bright white & blues. In the 40's Ken is awash in dark browns and silence. There are never any words relayed in Ken's story so we're left with pictures which is almost more telling than words.
Incredibly powerful, although I'm not sure if I cry for Ken or for my family. I wonder if I should have tried harder to get my Grandmother & Great-Uncles & Great-Aunts to talk about their time in the camps. It was something that they obviously never wanted to talk about. When asked my Ba-chan (grandmother) would always say she was too young to remember. My Uncles always changed the subject and with time I understood this was something that they didn't want to to remember.
I wonder what happened when they came home. How they were treated, what happened to all of the belongings left behind and how they rebuilt everything. I wonder about Great-Grandparents I never knew, how much they must have suffered. I wonder what it must have felt like to have always felt like part of a country and then all of a sudden being told you were not, to not belong anywhere.
In class I was once told by an entitled rich kid that the Japanese Americans wanted to go to the camps. That it was like a vacation for them. That was the first time I realized people were idiots.
What struck me most about this book was the way Pyle chose to voice the time in the internment camp. With no voice. No dialogue spoken. It felt to me as a nod to the quiet that covers the events even to this day. It is not spoken of, expect mostly by Sansei who want their parents and grandparents stories to be told, to not be forgotten. Well worth the read.