NoNo Boy, John Okada
NoNo Boy, John Okada
2 Rating(s)
List: $19.99 | Sale: $13.99
Club: $9.99

No-No Boy

Author: John Okada, Ruth Ozeki

Narrator: David Shih

Unabridged: 9 hr 46 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 05/29/2018

Categories: Fiction


Synopsis

First published in 1956, No-No Boy was virtually ignored by a public eager to put World War II and the Japanese internment behind them. It was not until the mid-1970s that a new generation of Japanese American writers and scholars recognized the novel's importance and popularized it as one of literature's most powerful testaments to the Asian American experience.

No-No Boy tells the story of Ichiro Yamada, a fictional version of the real-life "no-no boys." Yamada answered "no" twice in a compulsory government questionnaire as to whether he would serve in the armed forces and swear loyalty to the United States. Unwilling to pledge himself to the country that interned him and his family, Ichiro earns two years in prison and the hostility of his family and community when he returns home to Seattle. As Ozeki writes, Ichiro's "obsessive, tormented" voice subverts Japanese postwar "model-minority" stereotypes, showing a fractured community and one man's "threnody of guilt, rage, and blame as he tries to negotiate his reentry into a shattered world."

About John Okada

John Okada was born in Seattle in 1923. He served in the U.S. Army in World War II, attended the University of Washington and Columbia University, and died of a heart attack at the age of 47. No-No Boy is his only published novel.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Lark on January 30, 2019

No-No Boy was searingly wrong for its time: in 1956 John Okada wrote a novel about a Japanese American man who went to prison instead of fighting for a country that had sent his family to an internment camp. It was a time when white readers weren't ready to read the truth, and when Japanese-American......more

Goodreads review by Thomas on May 17, 2023

I think this book is important for highlighting the racism Japanese Americans faced historically in the United States. One compelling theme is the push and pull between assimilating to mainstream American culture and resisting such pressures. I liked that John Okada was honest and angry in his writi......more

Goodreads review by Jill on January 03, 2020

A little-known fact about American history: at the time of World War II, the U.S. War Department required men of Japanese descent to answer two “loyalty” questions: “Are you willing to serve in the armed forces of the United States? Will you swear unqualified allegiance to the United States of Ameri......more

Goodreads review by Greg on April 18, 2025

To see my updated review from April 7, 2025, click here. Original Review, July 24, 2021“Yet, America is the only home that he knows and there is some comfort in the thought that his own mistake was no more detestable than the mistake of the nation which doubted him in the moment of crisis.” - John Ok......more