# They Called Us Enemy

**George Takei**  
**Justin Eisinger**  
**Steven Scott**  
**Harmony Becker**

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New York Times Bestseller! A stunning graphic memoir recounting actor/author/activist George Takei's childhood imprisoned within American concentration camps during World War II. Experience the forces that shaped an American icon — and America itself — in this gripping tale of courage, country, loyalty, and love.

George Takei has captured hearts and minds worldwide with his captivating stage presence and outspoken commitment to equal rights. But long before he braved new frontiers in _Star Trek_, he woke up as a four-year-old boy to find his own birth country at war with his father's — and their entire family forced from their home into an uncertain future.

In 1942, at the order of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, every person of Japanese descent on the west coast was rounded up and shipped to one of ten “relocation centers,” hundreds or thousands of miles from home, where they would be held for years under armed guard.

_They Called Us Enemy_ is Takei's firsthand account of those years behind barbed wire, the joys and terrors of growing up under legalized racism, his mother's hard choices, his father's faith in democracy, and the way those experiences planted the seeds for his astonishing future.

What does it mean to be American? Who gets to decide? When the world is against you, what can one person do? To answer these questions, George Takei joins co-writers Justin Eisinger & Steven Scott and artist Harmony Becker for the journey of a lifetime.

## Recommended Reads

### SYSTEMIC RACISM

- **Fiction**  
  - *Legendborn* by Tracy Deonn  
  - *Blood at the Root* by LaDarrion Williams  
- **Non-Fiction**  
  - *Between the World and Me* by Ta-Nehisi Coates  
  - *Letter from Birmingham Jail* by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

### IMMIGRATION

- **Fiction**  
  - *Automatic Noodle* by Annalee Newitz  
- **Non-Fiction**  
  - *They Called Us Enemy* by George Takei

### COLONIZATION

- **Fiction**  
  - *Cry, Voidbringer* by Elaine Ho  
  - *This Place: 150 Years Retold*  
- **Non-Fiction**  
  - *Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States: A Graphic Interpretation* by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

### LGBTQIA+ EXPERIENCE

- **Fiction**  
  - *No Gods, No Monsters* by Cadwell Turnbull  
  - *Hell Followed With Us* by Andrew Joseph White  
- **Non-Fiction**  
  - *A Little Queer Natural History* by Josh L. Davis  
  - *Before We Were Trans: A New History of Gender* by Kit Heyam

### PRISON ABOLITION

- **Fiction**  
  - *Chain-Gang All-Stars* by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah  
- **Non-Fiction**  
  - *Abolitionist Intimacies* by El Jones

### DISABILITY

- **Fiction**  
  - *Cinder* by Marissa Meyer  
- **Non-Fiction**  
  - *Grievers* by adrienne marie brown

For other recommendations sorted by social justice topic I highly recommend going to [AK Press](https://www.akpress.org/books.html) an independent publishing house that specializes in radical books.