Pre & Post-read of Weedflower

Pre-read: I defiantly have heard about Japanese internment camps. We actually did a lot with this topic in high school and I am well aware of what they went through. I look forward to this book. I have heard some very good things about it and I hope it lives up to the hype.
Post-read: This book was everything I though it would be. It started very slowly and I was worried at first. However, this book developed into a wonderful story about the unequal treatment of Japanese people. The charters in this book tend not to follow the normal molds for the roles that they play. Takao was the only person who really followed what I thought they would do. He seemed to be the typical little boy and have the same interest as many other little boys. However, his older sister Sumiko did not fit and role I have ever seen. She was distant to the kids at school and hated by some, but at home she was loved and had great responsibility. She was in charge of grading the flowers and heating the bath water. She also looked out Takao because their parents died when he was very little and they had to live with their aunt and uncle.
This story started a down hill spiral in terms of the treatment of Japanese people when Sumiko went to the birthday party. I was appalled at the way she was treated. I just cannot fathom someone doing that. I was yelling at the book when I read this. I also felt so ashamed for Sumiko because she felt like she could not tell her family and she had to hide the scarf in her underwear. As the United States entered the war there was a drastic turn of events for Sumiko and many other Japanese Americans. They were forced to leave behind everything they could not sale or carry. I think one passage that sums up the way the people actually felt is “As they drove, Sumiko saw that the community was deserted. Nobody worked the land, no kids played in the yards, no old people sat on their front porches. Cheesecloth shuddered over the lonely fields. In many houses, Sumiko saw signs hanging in the windows: I AM AMERICAN.” I can just picture a ghost town in which the people were forced from their homes, even though they are natives of this country.
I can defiantly see why the Japanese interment camps were called American concentration camps. We moved people, who were U.S. citizens, from their home with force and forced them into cramped housing in the middle of the desert or other hospitable places. The Germans would have been proud of us. It turns my stomach every time I read something like this because it really happened and the white majority just sat around and watched it happen. This is a moving book. This is a book that I would use in a 5th or 6th grade classroom and it would be discussed more on the emotional and historical side rather than on the literary side. It is a well-written piece, but I do not feel that this book was meant for that. It is meant to tell a true to life, fictional account of a great American tragedy, and it does this with great color and texture. I loved this book and will be on the look out for more from this author.