Weedflower, Cynthia Kadohata
Weedflower, Cynthia Kadohata
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Weedflower

Author: Cynthia Kadohata

Narrator: Kimberly Farr

Unabridged: 6 hr 19 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 03/28/2006


Synopsis

Twelve-year-old Sumiko feels her life has been made up of two parts: before Pearl Harbor and after it. The good part and the bad part. Raised on a flower farm in California, Sumiko is used to being the only Japanese girl in her class. Even when the other kids tease her, she always has had her flowers and family to go home to.
Now, other Americans start to suspect that all Japanese people are spies for the emperor and Sumiko and her family find themselves being shipped to an internment camp in one of the hottest deserts in the United States. The vivid color of her previous life is gone forever, and now dust storms regularly choke the sky and seep into every crack of the military barrack that is her new “home.”
Sumiko soon discovers that the camp is on an Indian reservation and that the Japanese are as unwanted there as they’d been at home. But then she meets a young Mohave boy who might just become her first real friend….
With searing insight and clarity, Newbery Medal—winning author Cynthia Kadohata explores an important and painful topic through the eyes of a young girl who yearns to belong. Weedflower is the story of the rewards and challenges of a friendship across the racial divide, as well as the based-on-real-life story of how the meeting of Japanese Americans and Native Americans changed the future of both.

About The Author

Cynthia Kadohata is the author of the Newbery Medal-winning book Kira-Kira, the Jane Addams Peace Award and Pen USA Award winner Weedflower, Cracker!, Outside Beauty, and several critically acclaimed adult novels, including The Floating World. She has published numerous short stories in such literary journals as the New Yorker, Ploughshares, Grand Street, and the Mississippi Review. She lives with her son and dog in West Covina, California.Kimberly Farr has appeared on Broadway, at the New York Shakespeare Festival, the Roundabout Theatre, Playwright's Horizons, and the American Place. She created the role of Eve in Arthur Miller's first and only musical, Up from Paradise, which was directed by the author. She appeared with Vanessa Redgrave in the Broadway production of The Lady from the Sea. She has also acted in regional theaters from Los Angeles to New Haven, Connecticut, including the original production of The 1940's Radio Hour at Washington, DC's Arena Stage.


Reviews

AudiobooksNow review by Lisa the Librarian on 2007-10-09 13:48:50

It's not that this is a bad story. It's not that Kadohata is a bad writer. But her characters and narrative voice are filled with such quiet despair; Kira Kira was the same way. Narrator Kimberly Farr certainly succeeds in conveying that tone. It's an interesting story that brings out the conflict between Native Americans and the Japanese-American internees, and it is not an entirely dark story. If you liked Kira Kira and the author's voice, you will doubtless enjoy Weedflower.

Goodreads review by Anne on May 28, 2016

Sumiko lost her parents in a car accident years ago. She and her brother are lucky. Lucky that her aunt and uncle have taken them in. But Sumiko is not certain she will ever belong. How can anything be certain with war on the horizon, Japan the assailant, and her own family viewed as the enemy? The i......more

Goodreads review by Kerri on April 26, 2008

Most kids don’t even realize that when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, we treated all Japanese like outcasts. We took them from their homes and put them in “camps” so that they would no longer be a part of American society. In some cases, we were not much better than the Germans because we treated......more

Goodreads review by mitchell on December 27, 2011

Twelve-year-old Sumiko lives on a flower farm in northern California with her little brother, her aunt and uncles, and her grandfather. In every way, hers is like other American farming families: every member does his or her part to keep things running, there is never a shortage of work to be done,......more

Goodreads review by Helvry on September 11, 2011

Bagaimana rasanya kesepian? bagaimana rasanya bosan? bagaimana rasanya meninggalkan kamp? Itulah pertanyaan-pertanyaan yang diajukan Sumiko dan ia sendiri yang menjawabnya. Novel ini bercerita tentang kehidupan keluarga Jepang-Amerika pada masa perang dunia ke-2. Sumiko, seorang gadis berumur dua bel......more