They Called Us Enemy
by George Takei
Internment meets ink and defiance.
For you if
your kid is learning about injustice and needs to understand that it happened to real people who were American too
⚡ Choose Your Route ⚡
Not sold directly on this site. Support indie bookstores with a new copy, or go sustainable with a used one.
Buy New on Bookshop.orgSupports independent bookstores
— OR —
Find Used on Better World BooksSecondhand & sustainable
$20 MSRP
Reference price shown. Other editions may be available.
Takei’s graphic memoir revisits his childhood in a Japanese American internment camp — a story of injustice told with grace and moral clarity. Illustrated and immediate, it transforms history into empathy, reminding us that patriotism without justice is just obedience.
Where This Book Lives
- Themes
- coming of ageinjustice
Part of a Reading Journey
Related Viewing
Shares a topic, theme, or setting with this book in the catalog.
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe(2023)
dir. Aitch Alberto
One summer, secrets neither boy knew he had.
In 1987 El Paso, two Mexican-American teenage loners strike up a friendship that cracks open everything one of them has spent years keeping carefully closed off — including who he is. Adapted from Benjamin Alire Sáenz's novel.
Why it’s here: Punk in its tenderness rather than its edge — a bilingual, bicultural, queer coming-of-age story that doesn't need trauma to justify its own gentleness. Pedagogical in showing how friendship can crack open a kid who's spent years protecting himself by staying closed.
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress(2002)
dir. Dai Sijie
Banned books, secret readings, and one crush.
Two city students sent to a remote mountain village for Maoist "re-education" during the Cultural Revolution discover a hidden suitcase of banned Western novels — and use them to woo the local tailor's granddaughter. Adapted from Dai Sijie's own novel.
Why it’s here: Punk in treating banned Western novels as genuinely dangerous contraband — literature here isn't decoration, it's the thing state re-education is specifically designed to purge. Pedagogical in showing how forbidden art still gets in, and still changes people, even under total surveillance.
Same event, different angle
The same history — told by someone who saw it differently.
Same pattern, different era
Different time, different place. The same thing keeps happening.
All Boys Aren't Blue
George M. Johnson
A Black queer memoir they tried to erase from schools
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Blankets
Craig Thompson
The memoir that proved comics could break your heart.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Different Seasons
Stephen King
How fascism finds the boy next door.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Forever...
Judy Blume
The teen novel they banned for telling the truth.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
For the family bookshelf
Same idea, written for a younger reader. Good for reading together.
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
Sherman Alexie
A reservation kid goes to the white school. Everyone loses.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Darius the Great Is Not Okay
Adib Khorram
Half-Iranian, depressed, going to Iran. He finds himself there.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
It Ain't So Awful, Falafel
Firoozeh Dumas
Iranian American in 1979. Her country is on the news. Not in a good way.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Before the Ever After
Jacqueline Woodson
His dad was a football star. Something is changing. He watches.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST