Book Review Of Farewell To Manzanar By Karen Blumenthal

When it comes to the human condition, we find ourselves digging deeper and deeper everytime we observe said specimen. It’s quite brilliant to see how far we can push ourselves, how we break as if we were simply porcelain, and how we can grow to be the most vibrant and intelligent minds out there despite abandoning the world’s drawn path of success. Somehow though, we neglect these aspects. Especially, the darker, cruel, and morbid sides of the human condition. Human condition is the thematic approach and characteristics of things such as emotional growth, morality, or the crisis in our existence. The books “Steve Jobs: The Man Who Thought Different” by Karen Blumenthal as well as“Farewell to Manzanar” by Jeanne Wakatsuki and James D.Houston

Public attitudes toward the Japanese in California were shifting rapidly...tolerance had turned to distrust and irrational fear,” wrote Jeanne Wakatsuki, one of the authors of “Farewell to Manzanar.” The book is a memoir from her perspective, co-written by her husband James Houston and the two undoubtedly do a wonderful job re-weaving the horrors of life in an internment camp. The history is retold first with the day her life changed; her father came back almost as soon as he left for a fishing trip upon discovering that Honolulu had been bombed by Japan and Jeanne knew things would never be the same. Almost immediately, they were treated as ‘saboteurs’, their father was taken, and they were forced to move to two ghettos before being sent off to the internment camp Manzanar. Naive Jeanne was excited about the new experience while those who were old enough to understand fretted for what was to come. Their living conditions were incredibly poor including overflowing toilets, unfinished quarters, crowds, and lacking meals.People would leave for grueling field work because they hoped it’d be better than the camp. The authors go on to tell that Jeanne loses her family completely and rapidly. Her mother grows cold, her respectable father a drunkard, and her brothers nonchalant and blunt. Many people die in this chaos and we’re truly shown how some crisis break people beyond recovery, for example ‘Papa’ her honest, hard-working father

Blumenthal’s book about Steve Jobs is inspiring but brutally honest. She spares no details about his horrendous attitude as well as how neglectful we are of it. “Farewell Manzanar”’s Jeanne is a lot like her in that she often thinks of why we almost force ourselves to be ignorant of the terrifying things right in front of us. In literature especially, it’s important to capture the reader and I feel books express our flaws,and help us relate as well as keep us intrigued with whatever it is we’re