Relocating authority: Japanese Americans writing to redress mass incarceration
Date
2015
Authors
Shimabukuro, Mira, author
University Press of Colorado, publisher
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Volume Title
Abstract
Relocating Authority examines the ways Japanese Americans have continually used writing to respond to the circumstances of their community's mass imprisonment during World War II. Using both Nikkei cultural frameworks and community-specific history for methodological inspiration and guidance, Mira Shimabukuro shows how writing was used privately and publicly to individually survive and collectively resist the conditions of incarceration. Examining a wide range of diverse texts and literacy practices such as diary entries, note-taking, manifestos, and multiple drafts of single documents, Relocating Authority draws upon community archives, visual histories, and Asian American history and theory to reveal the ways writing has served as a critical tool for incarcerees and their descendants. Incarcerees not only used writing to redress the 'internment' in the moment but also created pieces of text that enabled and inspired further redress long after the camps had closed. Relocating Authority highlights literacy's enduring potential to participate in social change and assist an imprisoned people in relocating authority away from their captors and back to their community and themselves. It will be of great interest to students and scholars of ethnic and Asian American rhetorics, American studies, and anyone interested in the relationship between literacy and social justice.--Provided by publisher.
Description
Rights Access
Access is limited to the Adams State University, Colorado School of Mines, Colorado State University, Colorado State University Pueblo, Fort Lewis College, Metropolitan State University of Denver, University of Alaska Fairbanks, University of Colorado Boulder, University of Colorado Colorado Springs, University of Colorado Denver, University of Denver, University of Northern Colorado, University of Wyoming, Utah State University, and Western Colorado University members only.
Subject
Japanese Americans -- Evacuation and relocation, 1942-1945 -- Historiography
Japanese Americans -- Reparations -- History -- 20th century
Authority -- Social aspects -- United States -- History -- 20th century
Creative writing -- Social aspects -- United States -- History -- 20th century
Literacy -- Social aspects -- United States -- History -- 20th century
Japanese Americans -- Intellectual life -- 20th century
Japanese Americans -- Social conditions -- 20th century
Community life -- United States -- History -- 20th century
Social change -- United States -- History -- 20th century
Social justice -- United States -- History -- 20th century