Description
Description
In February 1942, shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an executive order authorizing the secretary of war to remove 120,000 Japanese Americans from their homes on the West Coast and corral them into inland concentration camps. To be considered for release, they were required to answer the so-called loyalty questionnaire. Question 27 asked the inmates--who had been imprisoned without cause by the US military--whether they were willing to serve in combat for the US military. Question 28 asked them--many of whom American citizens who had never visited Japan--to renounce allegiance to the Japanese emperor. Answering these questions caused volatile divisions within the camps, tore families and friends apart, and had lasting repercussions in the decades postwar.
Questions 27 & 28 reaches backward and forward from the time of the questionnaire, chronicling the individuals who arrived in the US from Japan at the turn of the century, their children who came of age during war and incarceration, and their descendants who lived in its aftermath. Yamashita mixes fact with fiction and layers genres from James Bond movies to haiku to oral history, transfiguring an enormity of archival research into a chorus of stories. With her signature wit and aplomb, she gives voice to laborers, artists, scholars, informants, and activists who, over three generations, defined an immigrant community.
About the Author
About the Author
Critical Reviews
Critical Reviews
"Karen Tei Yamashita deserves to be a literary household name."--Adam Morgan, Esquire's "Most Anticipated Books of 2026"
"Most of us understand that history is often just the victor's account of how things happened. But the novel's achievement is that we are forced to experience this insight almost bodily. We feel the weight of the past, all these accumulated voices and perspectives, within and between Yamashita's novels, as well as the process through which disparate stories, anecdotes, or experiences might coalesce as history."--Hua Hsu, The New Yorker
"[Questions 27 & 28] reveals a concealed corner of American history with depth and nuance."--Alta Journal "Now, at this very moment, our government is rounding people up, imprisoning and deporting them--immigrants, refugees, students, workers with legal visas. They are denied due process as the Constitution is being flouted. It is crucial that we read Questions 27 & 28 by Karen Tei Yamashita. Learning what happened not that long ago to American citizens may help us know what actions to take now, legally, politically, heroically."--Maxine Hong Kingston, author of The Woman Warrior and I Love a Broad Margin to My Life "With Questions 27 & 28, Karen Tei Yamashita expands the boundaries of the novel, achieving a polyvocal and multimodal environment within the act of engaged reading the work elicits. Questions 27 & 28 challenges the unconscionable incarceration of Japanese Americans with an intricate and intimate testament to the courage, dignity, and creativity of those who dared the alchemy of identity and the integrity of belonging."--Earl Jackson, Professor Emeritus, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, Taiwan
Publishing Information
Publishing Information
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