Farewell to Manzanar Themes

Farewell to Manzanar is all about dashed hopes, failed dreams, and foiled plans, so it's easy to presume that this book is going to be a downer through and through. But the book is also just as muc...

This book is all about putting family first, even when family is a code word for patriarch or father. But since the father in this book is deeply flawed, the major issue for Farewell to Manzanar re...

Ever been into a fun house with all those weird mirrors that distort everything? That's kind of what Japanese-American internment is all about in this book. You go into Farewell to Manzanar thinkin...

It's kind of a no-brainer to say that the internment of Japanese-Americans sprang from a nation's racial prejudice against the Japanese (and maybe Asians in general). But Farewell to Manzanar also...

There's a reason why people say hindsight is 20/20. Making a good decision—having the judgment and perspective to do so—is a lot harder than hindsight makes it appear. Farewell to Manzanar does...

Farewell to Manzanar is all about how inescapable being a foreign "Other" is for the Japanese-American people, and the main members of the Wakatsuki clan all deal with the burden of feeling like th...

What kind of community can come out of a prison environment? No, this isn't coming from an episode of Orange is the New Black—it's a major concern and reality for the characters in Farewell to Ma...

It's so misleading. You read that Farewell to Manzanar is an autobiography written by a woman who went through internment, so you figure that the book is going to be all about a Japanese-American g...

Reading Farewell to Manzanar is like getting a crash course in 1940s Japanese-American womanhood, with an emphasis on the hyphen. You get accounts of super-traditional Japanese ways of creating fem...