

Michi Challenges History
From Farm Girl to Costume Designer to Relentless Seeker of the Truth: The Life of Michi Weglyn
Author: Ken Mochizuki
Narrator: Traci Kato-Kiriyami
Unabridged: 2 hr 57 min
Format: Digital Audiobook Download
Publisher: Recorded Books
Published: 06/06/2023
Categories: Young Adult Nonfiction, Biography & Autobiography
Synopsis
Michi was the daughter of Japanese immigrants. In 1942, when she was fifteen, she had been sent to such a camp and imprisoned during World War II along with other Americans of Japanese ancestry. Her family lost everything—but Michi asserted herself as a student leader in high school and, against the wishes of
her family, went on to college; then to New York, where she forged a career as a costume designer, dressing some of the most popular show business personalities of the day.
At the time the attorney general made his remark, the existence of the camps was unacknowledged by both the government and much of the Japanese American community. Michi chose to rock this boat: she left behind her career and set out to document the story of the camps. Her book, Years of Infamy, used the
government’s own records to account for the camps’ existence and for the racism and political calculation that led to their creation. It became a milestone in Japanese American history and a catalyst for the government’s eventual acknowledgment of its discrimination toward its citizens of Japanese ancestry.
In Michi Challenges History, groundbreaking children’s book author Ken Mochizukiweaves a captivating portrait of a woman who defied cultural and political constraints to fight for justice and to uncover the truth of her people’s history—and her own.