76
the Wakatsuki family’s internal ties, as presented
through confrontations between Ko and his wife
and children. At Manzanar, Ko begins drinking
heavily, abuses Riku, and gets into fights with
other internees including, at one point, his own
son Kiyo. Jeanne’s older brother Woody enlists
in the military, hoping that this will demonstrate
his family’s loyalty to the United States and speed
their release, but Woody’s decision enrages Ko,
who tells his son that it is impossible for a sol-
dier to fight well when he is partially invested on
both sides of a war. Throughout the book, Ko’s
position as family patriarch slowly slips away as
he alienates his family and becomes increasingly
self-destructive.
The effect of the internment on Jeanne’s self-
image, and by extension on the self-image of all
nisei (second-generation Japanese Americans),
provides the book’s second major narrative.
Jeanne’s respect for her father changes slowly to
fear and resentment, and ultimately to embarrass-
ment and shame whenever she is identified with
any recognizably Asian item or practice; during a
school certificate assembly following their release
from Manzanar, she is mortified when her father
stands and bows solemnly in front of the other
parents. In school she takes up baton twirling in
an attempt to make herself seem less convention-
ally Japanese. These attempts at hiding her ethnic-
ity, however, ultimately fail. As Jeanne grows up,
she comes to understand the internment as the
moment when her family became fragmented,
and the moment when her understanding of
herself as a Japanese American—not simply an
American—first began to develop.
Considered both as a personal and a political
memoir, Farewell to Manzanar is one of the most
significant books in Asian-American literature. In
1976 Farewell to Manzanar was adapted for a Uni-
versal Television film, for which Jeanne Wakatsuki
Houston cowrote the screenplay.
Bibliography
Kim, Elaine H. Asian American Literature: An Intro-
duction to the Writings and Their Social Context.
Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1984.
Smith, Page. Democracy on Trial: The Japanese Amer-
ican Evacuation and Relocation in World War II.
New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995.
Eric G. WaggonerFault Lines Meena Alexander (1993)
MEENA ALEXANDER’s memoir Fault Lines traces her
passage across different continents as she moves
from India to Sudan, to England, back to India,
and finally to the United States. In this enchanting
narrative of her life, Alexander writes about her
migration from one place to another, which left
her with a feeling of homelessness. She describes
herself as “a woman cracked by multiple migra-
tions” who is “writing in search of a homeland.”
She depicts her childhood and adolescence in
Kerela and Khartoum in Sudan, her life as an aca-
demic in Delhi and Hyderabad in India, and her
life as an immigrant in the United States. She de-
scribes how she crosses cultural, geographical, and
psychological boundaries as she searches for her-
self and a home. She has been “uprooted so many
times she can connect nothing with nothing.” She
recounts the horror of moving to a new country as
a five-year-old child and reflects upon her quest to
reclaim that lost childhood. During this quest she
crosses over the “fault lines” that are formed by al-
tering loyalties to family members, languages, and
cultures. The memoir was motivated by her search
for a homeland and a sense of belonging.
Alexander writes about the obscurity of being
in a female body in a society where gender differ-
ences are prominent. She reflects upon her culture
and the expectations that are a part of being raised
in a certain cultural milieu. Being a Syrian Chris-
tian born in India, she always felt that she was the
“Other.” This feeling does not end as she moves
across countries. She records how she revives her
spiritual identity through her poetry. Alexander
writes about her grandfather, whose actions are
motivated by the callous class system in India; her
mother, who expects her to perform the traditional
women’s duties; her maternal grandmother, Kunju,
and various other relatives and servants. Alexander
also recounts that she knew six languages—Malay-76 Fault Lines