By J.K. YAMAMOTO, Rafu Staff Writer
“Love in the Library” (2022, Candlewick Press) by Maggie Tokuda-Hall, illustrated by Yas Imamura, introduces young readers to the World War II incarceration of Japanese Americans through the real-life story of the author’s maternal grandparents.
After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Tama Inouye, a senior at the University of Washington, is sent to Minidoka, Idaho, where she meets her future husband, George Tokuda, a Seattle pharmacist.
“All Japanese Americans from the West Coast — elderly people, children, babies — now live in prison camps like Minidoka,” the publisher notes. “To be who she is has become a crime, it seems, and Tama doesn’t know when or if she will ever leave. Trying not to think of the life she once had, she works in the camp’s tiny library, taking solace in pages bursting with color and light, love and fairness.
“And she isn’t the only one. George waits each morning by the door, his arms piled with books checked out the day before. As their friendship grows, Tama wonders: Can anyone possibly read so much? Is she the reason George comes to the library every day?”
Tokuda-Hall’s love story features a photo of her grandparents Tama (1920-2013) and George (1912-1985). Storytelling seems to run in the family — Tama was a writer and performer who was involved with Seattle’s Northwest Asian American Theatre; her parents, Bay Area broadcast journalist Wendy Tokuda and television producer Richard Hall, co-wrote “Humphrey the Lost Whale” and “Shiro in Love,” children’s books based on true stories; Tokuda also wrote the fact-based “Samson the Hot Tub Bear.”
“Love in the Library,” intended for Grades 1 through 4, includes an afterword and background material for readers to learn more about the Japanese American wartime experience.
Tokuda-Hall, who lives in Oakland with her husband and son, is also the author of “Also an Octopus” and the young adult novel “The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea,” but it was “Love in the Library” that unexpectedly became the focus of national attention when publishing giant Scholastic wanted to license her book, thereby giving it a wider audience.
The catch: Scholastic wanted to edit the author’s note, specifically her references to “the deeply American tradition of racism” in providing the historical context for the camps.
Reflecting a trend in some parts of the country against teaching children anything negative about America’s past or present treatment of women, people of color and the LGBTQ community, Scholastic said that these are “politically sensitive” times and that talking about racism “goes beyond what some teachers are willing to cover with the kids in their elementary classrooms … This could lead to teachers declining to use the book, which would be a shame.”
Tokuda-Hall’s answer was a hard “no,” and she posted her response on her website, www.prettyokmaggie.com.
Following is The Rafu Shimpo’sinterview with the author about her books and the recent controversy.
Rafu: What inspired you to write books for young readers? Were you influenced as a kid by the books your parents wrote?
Tokuda-Hall:I was influenced by my parents in that they’re both natural storytellers, who taught me to value things like truth and art and rigor. But it did not really occur to me that I wanted to be a children’s book author as a vocation until I got a job as a children’s bookseller while I was getting my MFA in writing [at University of San Francisco].
Up that point I wrote short stories, but when I started working in the bookstore I really fell in love with children’s literature. It was so vibrant and urgent and fun, and the audience is so unforgiving. There’s nothing pretentious about a child’s opinion of a book. They like it or they don’t. And I love that frankness.
Rafu:Did you grow up hearing about your family history from your grandparents, parents and other relatives? What stories impacted you the most?
Tokuda-Hall:Here is a way in which I am so deeply privileged it only highlights the injustice of my luck. My entire family is composed of incredible storytellers, and choosing a single family story is impossible. They were how I was taught to understand the world and my place in it.
My grandfather Monty [Hall of “Let’s Make a Deal” fame] used to tell a story about one of his great-grandfathers, a Jew in what is now the Ukraine who was apparently staying in a tavern one night and trying to pray. An anti-semite, bent on bothering him, harassed him until my ancestor lost his patience and punched him with his right hand, accidentally (or so the story goes) killing him.
When his trial came, the judge ruled that no man, not even a Jew, should be harassed while praying and as such my ancestor could go free. But, the judge said, he could never raise his right hand in anger ever again. This term was accepted, though as the story goes, he did pretty well with the left.
I don’t know if it’s the story that impacted me the most (it’s not) but it is the one that makes me laugh the most.
Rafu:What is your approach to incorporating contemporary issues into your stories?
Tokuda-Hall:I generally think it’s impossible not to incorporate contemporary issues into a story, when you start from a place of being honest about your own perspective. We all have so much that shapes how we think and why we think it and where our opinions come from. I try not to take any of my own opinions as a given when I write, and so invariably I end up in confrontation with contemporary issues.
Sometimes this is on purpose, as with “Love in the Library,” the story of how my maternal grandparents met in Minidoka, which begs comparisons to current times — and absolutely I was intentional about that.
But it can also be by necessity as dictated by the questions a novel asks, as in “The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea,” a young adult novel I wrote that ended up — through writing it — asking a lot of questions about decolonization and justice.
Rafu:What was your reaction to Scholastic’s request that you delete the references to racism? What was their reaction to your response? What is the current status of your talks with them?
Tokuda-Hall:I was offended. I was disgusted. I was unsurprised. Their backtracking and apologies were fine, but it was clear to me then and has proved to be true now that they’re giving people the option to opt out of a strong selection of diverse books at their school book fairs, that they are not actually interested in making meaningful change in their organization.
As such I told them that even after the offer to license the book in its full and honest form, my answer was still no. That I didn’t believe they were doing well enough by my community — and by this I mean all historically marginalized people in the United States — to have the right to my family’s story, and that furthermore I did not trust them with it.
Rafu:What kind of messages of support and opposition have you received? Have your fellow authors been supportive?
Tokuda-Hall:Fellow authors and educators and librarians have been wildly supportive, and I have been so touched by it. There were petitions that went around that garnered hundreds of signatures protesting what had happened. Messages of support.
I also received an email that wished death on my children, and one that suggested I should be put in a camp for having not appreciated everything America has given me. But I’d say the scales are weighed far more on the side of support than not, given the news outlets that carried the story.
Rafu:What are your thoughts on the current political climate in which books and school curriculums are being banned if they address racism, homophobia, sexism, etc.? What can be done to combat this trend?
Tokuda-Hall:Make no mistake: these book bans took a hard tick up after the protests of 2020, and it became clear that Gen Z was creating multiracial coalitions of resistance. These are being done as a political straw man. The people who want to ban books don’t actually give a sh*t about keeping kids safe — they want the silence of the historically marginalized. They are creating fictional culture wars to try and foment discord between groups that should have class solidarity.
Never let anyone tell you they’re banning books “for the children.” It’s a lie, and should be treated as one. If they cared for children, they wouldn’t be offended by the books they’re reading that show them diverse voices — they’d care about gun violence, free lunch programs, and universal healthcare.
We who believe bans are wrong need to be as loud, disruptive to business as usual, and physically present in the places where these debates are happening as those who support the bans. More of us believe this is abhorrent and wrong than those who believe in bans, but they’re winning. They are better organized than we are, for one.
And so if you want to fight book bans, find out where it’s happening. Call those libraries, call in to those school board meetings. Make yourself a nuisance. Make it inconvenient, expensive and impossible to ignore you. Scream. Shout. Tell your friends to do the same.
We are losing this battle because there are so many things to be horrified by, it’s a firehose of bad news all the time. So pick an issue you care about — and maybe it’s book-banning — and go to the mat for it.
Rafu:Are there any film or TV adaptations of your works planned?
Tokuda-Hall:Who knows at this point. With the writer’s strike (THEY WON!!!!) and the current SAG-AFTRA strike (get them, actors!) everything is on hold and I’m fine with that. I support the striking workers wholeheartedly. [The interview was conducted before the conclusion of the actors’ strike.]
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Tokuda-Hall’s latest is “The Siren, the Song, and the Spy,” released by Candlewick in September.
In this young adult novel, a diverse resistance force fights to topple an empire in a story about freedom, identity, and decolonization. The publisher provides the following synopsis:
“By sinking a fleet of imperial warships, the Pirate Supreme and their resistance fighters have struck a massive blow against the Emperor. Now allies from across the empire are readying themselves, hoping against hope to bring about the end of the conquerors’ rule and the rebirth of the Sea.
“But trust and truth are hard to come by in this complex world of mermaids, spies, warriors, and aristocrats. Who will Genevieve — lavishly dressed but washed up, half-dead, on the Wariuta island shore — turn out to be? Is warrior Koa’s kindness toward her admirable, or is his sister Kaia’s sharp suspicion wiser? And back in the capital, will pirate-spy Alfie really betray the Imperials who have shown him affection, especially when a duplicitous senator reveals xe would like nothing better?
“Meanwhile, the Sea is losing more and more of herself as her daughters continue to be brutally hunted, and the Empire continues to expand through profits made from their blood. The threads of time, a web of schemes, shifting loyalties, and blossoming identities converge in Maggie Tokuda-Hall’s remarkable companion to ‘The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea,’ as unlikely young allies work to forge a new and better world.”
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“Love in the Library.” Text copyright ? 2021 by Maggie Tokuda-Hall. Illustrations copyright ? 2021 by Yas Imamura. Reproduced by permission of the publisher, Candlewick Press, Somerville, Mass.