My book is about Ruth Asawa, but she was not the only artist or even the only female artist imprisoned because of her Japanese ancestry during World War II. Currently an exhibit at the Smithsonian that runs through August 17, 2025 features the artwork of three Japanese-American painters, all of them women: Miki Hayakawa, Hisako Hibi, and Mine Okubo. The New York Times carried a review of the exhibit by Aruna D'Souza. 
     I was fascinated by the painting Wind and Dust by Mine Okubo.

This painting was created at the prison she was sent to in Topaz, Utah. This camp was notorious for the bleak, windy conditions, which she captures with the unadorned barracks surrounded by beige sand without a single tree or blade of grass in sight. But what I am drawn to in the painting is the image of the family all holding onto each other, rollled up into a ball while the winds of fortune buffet them on all sides.  The figures' closeness shows the way family bonds functioned to protect people, but simultaneously their defensive postures illustrate the fragility of those bonds under massive duress. The three individuals do not look at each other. They are just trying to survive. 

Ruth Asawa was incarcerated in Arkansas, not Utah. Okubo was already an accomplished artist when she was imprisoned, but Ruth was just a highschool student. Ruth did not create paintings of the camps. However, after being imprisoned behind barbed wire, she chose wire as her favorite medium. With wire she wove her mysterious sculptures that cast mesmerizing shadows on the walls.

A big box arrived just as the snow storm began here. "It's very heavy," my husband said.

I want to share this article by Dan Rather about Mitsuye Endo who just received the Presidential Citizens Medal posthumously from President Biden. Like Ruth Asawa, Mitsuye Endo was incarcerated in a detention camp as a young woman. She became the plaintiff in a law suit brought by the Japanese American Citizen's League that challenged the legality of this incarceration. After she won her case, most of the camps were closed.   

I hope that my book, A Line Can Go Anywhere, brings attention to the injustice of Executive Order 9066 at a time when politicians are talking again about mass detention and the incarceration of families. Ruth was resilient, but she experienced heart rending family separation. Her father was sent to a separate prison from the rest of the family because the government viewed him as suspicious. His leadership in the small Japanese American community of Norwalk was his only "crime." Ruth did not see him for five years. Her mother did not speak English and it was up to the children, Ruth and her siblings, to write to government authorities to try to find her father and reunite the family. Ruth
was also separated from her younger sister, who had been sent to Japan before the war to visit family. 

​I am very excited about this glowing review from Kirkus. This book has been such a long time in the making with so many hiccups along the way, but all along I knew/ felt it was special.  ​


A LINE CAN GO ANYWHERETHE BRILLIANT, RESILIENT LIFE OF ARTIST RUTH ASAWA
by Caroline McAlister ; illustrated by Jamie Green ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 25, 2025
A title worth moving to the head of the line.

An artist grappled with boundaries.
Growing up in California, Ruth Aiko Asawa (1926-2013) was keenly aware of an “invisible line” separating her life at home, where she was called Aiko, from school, where she was known as Ruth—though “she could cross back and forth or even straddle it if she had to.” This beautifully wrought metaphor for a bicultural Japanese American experience is echoed throughout the book: in the lines a young Asawa drew in the dirt at her family farm and the way she lined up for the Pledge of Allegiance at school. The most important lines, however, were those she made as an artist, especially when creativity sustained her while she and other Japanese Americans were imprisoned during World War II. She studied to become an art teacher, but “because she looked like the enemy, her college wouldn’t place her at a school.” She persevered and, after the war, found her way to Black Mountain College in North Carolina. Drawing inspiration from Mexican wire baskets and memories of barbed wire at the camps, Asawa was driven by the conviction that “art is for everyone.” Infused with emotion, the unflinchingly honest text and exquisite mixed-media art, which layers dazzling pops of blue onto muted backdrops, detail the oppression Asawa faced—and her resilience. An informative author’s note provides additional context for this story of an innovative artist whose legacy of democratizing the arts is utterly inspirational.
A title worth moving to the head of the line. (photograph, bibliography) (Picture-book biography. 7-11)
Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9781250310378

Page Count: 40
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press

Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025

Categories:
CHILDREN'S BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | CHILDREN'S HISTORY