Best of the Best Book Club: "They Called Us Enemy" by George Takei

The Coronado Public Library's Best of the Best Book Club meets regularly on the 4th Wednesday of each month to discuss books that have won major awards. 

For our October meeting, we will discuss the 2020 Eisner Award winner They Called Us Enemy by George Takei, astunning graphic memoir recounting actor/author/activist George Takei's childhood imprisoned within American concentration camps during World War II.

Place this title on hold via our online catalog, or check out the e-book through the CloudLibrary app. 

About They Called Us Enemy

George Takei has captured hearts and minds worldwide with his magnetic performances, sharp wit, and outspoken commitment to equal rights. But long before he braved new frontiers in Star Trek, he woke up as a four-year-old boy to find his own birth country at war with his father’s — and their entire family forced from their home into an uncertain future.

In 1942, at the order of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, every person of Japanese descent on the west coast was rounded up and shipped to one of ten “relocation centers,” hundreds or thousands of miles from home, where they would be held for years under armed guard.

They Called Us Enemy is Takei’s firsthand account of those years behind barbed wire, the terrors and small joys of childhood in the shadow of legalized racism, his mother’s hard choices, his father’s tested faith in democracy, and the way those experiences planted the seeds for his astonishing future.

What does it mean to be American? Who gets to decide? When the world is against you, what can one person do? To answer these questions, George Takei joins cowriters Justin Eisinger & Steven Scott and artist Harmony Becker for the journey of a lifetime.