Description
Book SynopsisI discover a "lost" aunt, separated from our family due to racism and discrimination against the disabled. She had a mental disability due to childhood meningitis. She was taken away in 1942 when all Japanese Americans were considered the enemy and imprisoned. She then became a "ward" of the state. We believed she had died, but 70 years later found her alive and living a few miles from our family farm. How did she survive? Why was she kept hidden? How did both shame and resilience empower my family to forge forward in a land that did not want them? I am haunted and driven to explore my identity and the meaning of family—especially as farmers tied to the land. I uncover family secrets that bind us to a sense of history buried in the earth that we work and a sense of place that defines us.
Trade Review"A simultaneously elegant and sharp-edged exploration of the hidden past."—
Kirkus Reviews (starred)
"Masumoto has shared his experiences as an organic farmer in central California in books and as a columnist for the Sacramento Bee. Here, he details his family's remarkable discovery in 2012 of an aunt—his mother’s sister Shizuko (Sugi)—whose childhood case of meningitis rendered her mentally disabled, and who was thus forcibly separated from her siblings and parents during the internment of Japanese Americans in WWII...Masumoto thoughtfully ruminates on the swirl of emotions the war wrought on his family... and their shame in realizing that institutionalized care for Sugi might have been better than what they could have given her. Ultimately, there is pride in Sugi's resilience..." —Booklist
