What Is The Theme Of The Train To Crystal City By Russell

The Train to Crystal City is a historical fiction novel by Jan Jarboe Russell. It showcases the lives of many people living in the United States and what they had to go through being immigrants from different countries around the world. The way this novel is set up is it follows around multiple characters from different nationalities that are American citizens and how they had to deal with the internment camps and arrests. The title of the novel makes the story sound exciting and hopeful, however, this novel is quite the opposite. Throughout the story, the characters and all immigrants living in the United States during the time of World War II were in danger of being considered illegal aliens, even if they were not. Crystal City, Texas was

She showed compassion and sympathy for the people who lost their lives in the camp and anyone that had to go through living in the camp. Russell also showed she cared about this topic by acknowledging all of the immigrants and getting their side of the story as she wrote her book. She wanted all of her facts to be correct and show how life was during that time. Russell said herself she would like President Obama to apologize to all of the men, women, and children who were in Crystal City because no one has and she feels they deserve an apology since they were innocent people. Russell believed that the internment camp was wrong and caused suffering to people for no reason (The Train to Crystal City- Afterword

When I discovered this book it looked very interesting and I had never heard about this incident. As I read, I grew more and more fond of the book through every chapter because it was so eye opening to me as to what these people went through in their daily lives. I think it says a lot that this is not a very well-known part of American history since all of these people suffered, but no one really focuses on it or acknowledges it. I feel like sometimes our country only focuses on the good times instead of some of the bad times that have gotten us to where we are today. I really like how Russell set up the book, it followed around families through the chapters so I could see what was going on specifically in certain people's lives and their stories. In the chapters the book also switched and would give many facts and information about the time so I could tie that back to the families' stories. I think this book needs to be more widely known today along with the story of what happened in our country during that time. It was a very educational and inspiring book and I would highly recommend