In her Author's Note Tokuda-Hall tells the readers that this is the story of her maternal grandparents who met in Minidoka, a Japanese incarceration camp in Idaho. Tama (her grandmother) was the camp librarian, although "she didn't know how to be a librarian...In the camps people did the jobs that needed doing." Her grandmother had taken the job because "she liked books". George (Tokuda-Hall's grandfather) came every day to check out books. Tama questioned whether he could actually be reading all the long books he checked out. No, he wasn't reading them all. He was "only human". And the realization that she was the real reason he came every day dawned on her. Their love grew amidst their whispers.
George's "voice was so big it barely fit in the library..." Tama "held up her finger to remind him of the rules. They were in a library, after all."
The Author's note also connects the story of Minidoka to current events.
As much as I would hope this would be a story of a distant past, it is not. It's very much the story of America here and now. The racism the put my grandparents into Minidoka is the same hate that keeps children in cages on our border. It's the myth of white supremacy that brought slavery to our past and allows the police to murder Black people in our present. It's the same fear that brings Muslim bans. It's the same contempt that creates voter suppression, medical apartheid, and food deserts. The same cruelty that carved reservations out of stolen, sovereign land, that paved the Trail of Tears. Hate is not a virus; it is an American tradition.
Tokuda-Hall's author's note sparked controversy when Scholastic asked her to edit it in order to include the work in Scholastic's diversity-focused Rising Voices collection earlier this year. Tokuda-Hall refused and Scholastic ultimately issued an apology. More information about the request, Tokuda-Hall's response, and a link to the apology can be found in this article from Publisher's Weekly
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