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Silver Like Dust: One Family's Story Of America's Japanese Internment (2012)

by Kimi Cunningham Grant(Favorite Author)

3.67 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

1605982725 (ISBN13: 9781605982724)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

Pegasus

review 1: Silver Like Dust focuses on the relationship of a grandmother and granddaughter. The author--the granddaughter--wants to strengthen her relationship with her grandmother. At the start, she feels like she barely knows her. She knows a few things, perhaps, but not in a real-enough way. For example, she knows that her grandmother spent world war 2 in an internment camp. She knows that that is where her grandparents met, and also where her uncle was born. But her grandmother has never talked about the past, about the war, about her growing-up years. In fact, her grandmother has always been a private, quiet person. So she focuses her attention and begins to do things intentionally. She sets out to get to know her grandmother, she sets out to get the story, the real story. The b... moreook isn't just telling readers about the grandmother's experiences in the 1940s. The book is telling readers about the process, the journey, to getting to the story. That was unique, I thought. Not every nonfiction book lets readers in behind the scenes. I also thought it kept the book personal. This is very much family history, taking an interest in your family, in the past, of making sense of it all. I found it an interesting read.
review 2: This is not the first book I've read on Japanese-American concentration camps, but the parallels with my family have led to some new and deep personal realizations about race in America. Obachaan and her husband are the same age as my grandparents. My grandfather was born in America, but his father and his mother's parents were born in Germany and immigrated to the US around later years of the 19th century. He grew up in a small town/rural farming community that was very German in character, culture and language. For all practical purposes, German was the first language and spoken at home, church, school and most likely the brewery where my great-grandfather worked. Unlike Obachaan's family, mine was able to become citizens and own property. They homesteaded, and received free land from the government. My German-American family was not put into concentration camps, they did not suffer because of their heritage (at least to the extent where it greatly impacted their lives) and were able to join the mainstream of American culture. In fact, my grandparents were very successful and the epitome of Tom Brokaw's "Greatest Generation".Ironically, there are many members of my family who would deny that they are privileged because of the color of their skin and hold anti-immigrant views. It so easy to forget that as descendants of Europeans in America, we were born on 3rd base (compared to Asian-, African- & Native Americans) and to pride ourselves on our "home run", how we "worked so hard" for what we've achieved and to deny that not only is racism a deeply-seated and main current of American history, it is till here today. less

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