Displacement

Displacement by Kiku Hughes follows a tradition of Japanese American literature dealing with discrimination, immigrant identity, and generational trauma, particularly in relation to the Japanese incarceration camps in World War Two. Hughes shows that she is consciously part of this tradition, shown by her references to it. In particular, she references Miné Okubo, a Nisei artist and writer. Okubo was incarcerated at Topaz, as was Hughes’s own grandmother. Okubo produced thousands of drawings depicting the conditions and experiences of the camp, many of which are published in her book Citizen 13660.

Hughes also draws on accounts of the Japanese Americans who answered “no” to the so-called “loyalty questions” on the Application for Leave Clearance form, pejoratively called the “no-no boys” and interned in segregation at Tule Lake. The most famous account of those internees is John Okada’s No-No Boy (1957), following a “no-no boy’s” experience after the war, when Japanese Americans faced considerable stigmatization. The American public preferred to bury the institutionalized segregation and mistreatment of Japanese Americans and it wasn’t until the 1970s that the novel became widely-read.

Displacement more obliquely engages with the work of Hisaye Yamamoto and Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston. Hisaye Yamamoto (1921-2011) was one of the first successful Japanese American writers after the war.