‘Displacement’ is the Timely and Necessary Graphic Novel You Needed To Read Yesterday

There is a Zora Neal Hurston quote that seems etched into my mind whenever I think about this year, whenever I think about 2020. It is simply: “There are years that ask questions and years that answer.” This has been an incredibly long year, for so many of us it seems a lifetime has come and passed before our eyes: the pandemic, the call heard around the world to end police brutality, the damages from natural disasters like fires and hurricanes…and all the tragedy. It’s been a hard year that’s not even over yet. Yet, what has helped keep me sane? Reading. 2020 has been a year of so many great debuts, especially in the graphic novel market. Published in August, Kuku’s Hughes’ Displacement caught my eyes: “A teenager is pulled back in time to witness her grandmother’s experiences in World War II-era Japanese internment camps.” I was intrigued and wanted to read more. Soon, I found myself immersed into a narrative about family ties, the stories that don’t always get shared, and the immense power that both memory and trauma can hold in life–over generations.

INTERRUPTED Displacement opens to the author and her mother visiting an older section of San Francisco, opening to see a glimpse of where Hughes’ grandmother once grew up. There’s disappointment from mom as it is a place that…just doesn’t exist anymore. There’s sighing and walking about to find ancient history: the house where the grandmother and her immigrant parents lived until 1942 before they were forced from home…