Beneath the Wide Silk Sky (book)

Young adult coming-of-age novel by Emily Inouye Huey set in fictional Linley Island, Washington, in the weeks after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Samantha "Sam" Sakamoto is a sixteen-year-old tenth grader who lives with her Issei father, older brother Charlie, and older sister Kiki. Each struggles with the recent death of Sam's mother and the continuing financial struggles plaguing the family farm. An aspiring photographer—something she keeps secret from her family—she bonds with Beau McClatchy, who dreams of becoming a trumpet player. But Beau's father, an ardent racist, owns the lease to the Sakamoto farm and is determined to gain possession of it. The attack on Pearl Harbor bring out racist thugs, internment of Issei community leaders, and further family drama, forcing Sam and her friends and siblings to grow up quickly. At the same time, hints of romance bloom as she becomes closer to the handsome neighbor boy Hiro, whom socialite Kiki is also eying. Hiro also lends Sam his interned father's fancy camera, inspiring her to document what is happening. The novel ends with the Linley Japanese American community leaving the island en route to a concentration camp. Linley seems to be based on Bainbridge Island, Washington .

Author Emily Inouye Huey's Nisei grandparents, Charles Ichiro Inouye and Bessie Murakami Inouye, met when while incarcerated at the Heart Mountain , Wyoming, concentration camp and married there in 1943. Her father, Dillon Inouye, was born in Heart Mountain. The family settled in Utah after leaving camp, and Dillon became a professor of Instructional Science at Brigham Young University. Huey has an MFA in creative writing from Lesley University and lives in Utah with her husband and four children. Beneath the Wide Silk Sky is her first novel. ^[1]

An "Author's Note" cites the work of Dorothea Lange and inmate photographers such as Toyo Miyatake and Dave Tatsuno as inspirations for Samantha, while also providing a brief summary of the mass forced removal of Japanese Americans during World War II. Though that summary—and the depiction of historical events in the book in general—is broadly accurate, it does include the oft repeated but erroneous claim that half of the incarcerated Japanese Americans were children .

Might also like Weedflower by Cynthia Kadohata; Dust of Eden by Mariko Nagai; The Invisible Thread ' by Yoshiko Uchida