Can’t Wait Wednesday – WE ARE NOT FREE by Traci Chee

“Waiting On” Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted at Breaking the Spine, which encourages fellow bloggers to spotlight upcoming releases that we’re excited about.  It is a meme that I have  loved participating in for over a year now, but as Jill is no longer actively posting, from now on I’ll be linking to Can’t Wait Wednesday, hosted by Tressa at Wishful Endings, which is a spinoff of the original WoW meme.

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My selection for this week is WE ARE NOT FREE by Traci Chee.  I love historical fiction, especially that set in World War II.  Because there’s so much WWII historical fiction available, I find myself on the lookout for stories that present a different perspective from what I’m used to reading about.  When I saw this book, which is based on the interment camps where the U.S. imprisoned over 100,000 Japanese Americans after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, I knew I had to read it.  I follow actor George Takei on twitter and I’ve seen him occasionally talk about how life in those camps has shaped his life and I have a feeling this book is going to bring that life-changing experience even more poignant.

WE ARE NOT FREE by Traci Chee

Publication Date:  June 9, 2020

From Goodreads:

“All around me, my friends are talking, joking, laughing. Outside is the camp, the barbed wire, the guard towers, the city, the country that hates us.

We are not free.

But we are not alone.”

From New York Times best-selling and acclaimed author Traci Chee comes We Are Not Free, the collective account of a tight-knit group of young Nisei, second-generation Japanese American citizens, whose lives are irrevocably changed by the mass U.S. incarcerations of World War II.

Fourteen teens who have grown up together in Japantown, San Francisco.

Fourteen teens who form a community and a family, as interconnected as they are conflicted.

Fourteen teens whose lives are turned upside down when over 100,000 people of Japanese ancestry are removed from their homes and forced into desolate incarceration camps.

In a world that seems determined to hate them, these young Nisei must rally together as racism and injustice threaten to pull them apart.

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I’d love to hear what upcoming book releases you’re waiting on this Wednesday? Leave me your link in the comments below and I’ll stop by and check out your CWW selection for this week. 🙂