Book Report: We Are Not Strangers

24. Josh Tuininga, We Are Not Strangers (2023) (11/20/23)

This graphic novel tells the story of Marco Calvo's grandfather, who as a young man, in the 1930s, fled an island in the Sea of Marmara because of persecution—he was a Sephardic Jew—and came to the United States, settling in Seattle. Over time, he found a community, a wife, started a family. Eventually his mother managed to get a visa and join them. 

He also loved to fish. And he found a friend—a fishing buddy, Sam Akiyama—whom he shared a bench with as they cast their lines out into the Puget Sound, hoping for a salmon dinner.

Then, in 1942, Sam and his family were incarcerated at Minidoka Camp in Idaho, along with many hundreds of thousands of others of Japanese ancestry, in a dozen camps around the country.

This is the story of Papoo, as Marco called his grandfather. It's also the story of a friendship, and of community, as Papoo and others strove to safeguard their friend Sam's home, business, and belongings, and those of other Japanese in their neighborhood. 

This was something Marco did not really know anything about until his grandfather died, in 1987, and he noticed a stranger at the funeral. A stranger, an old Asian man, who was weeping. And he asked, Who are you? How did you know my grandfather?

The story is beautifully told in brief prose snippets, but more especially in the drawings. It's quite moving. 

And no: whoever we are, we are not strangers. We all have something deep and meaningful to share, if we just talk to one another.

Here are a few pages from the book—of Papoo arriving and finding community; of him relaxing, as he did, at a cafe with a cup of coffee and the newspaper; and of him walking through Japantown in Seattle, with all the shuttered businesses, realizing that he had to do something to help his friend.