This week really opened up my eyes to what happened while many were imprisoned in the Japanese internment camps. The way that Otsuka represented the people and the family in "When the Emperor was Divine", was by making them all vague, to symbolize the larger population. Yet, Okubo, goes into all of the details. I felt that through the drawings not only did I get a real graphic sense of the places and the setting, but I felt she did many things when them to get her point across.
I felt that she represented each Asian character a little differently, to show the diversity among the race, and to prove that they were not all the same. This is ironic, because Otsuka put everyone in the same category to make a point, and Okubo did the exact opposite. Okubo also does this with details of the situation, but in more blatant ways. I felt that because of the drawings, the language was obviously much more blatant in the graphic novel, which gave something so emotional, a different approach.
Overall, I felt that both novels captured what happened at this time in very different ways, but very successfully. I feel that I gained a greater knowledge on the topic, and was interested in finding out more. That especially happened in "Citizen 13660". There were many things that made me want to explore the topics. I had never heard that they were issued numbers, just like Jewish internment camps in the Holocaust. This really made it real for me on all levels, showing how awful it must have been. It was eye opening, and interesting, and I enjoyed both of the novels with all of the differences they had to offer.
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