Nisei Daughter

Nisei Daughter recounts Monica Sone’s childhood in Seattle’s Japanese American community and her experience in the internment camps that housed residents of Japanese ethnicity between 1942 and 1946. The memoir, which has become a seminal text in Asian American studies, was first published in 1953 and then republished in 1979 and 2014, each time with an introduction that reframes the work in its context.

The memoir begins with Sone’s realization that she is “a Japanese” when she is six years old and blissfully unaware that her ethnicity is a marker of differentiation (3). As a little girl, Sone enjoys the boisterous, sometimes rough atmosphere of the Carrollton Hotel, where she lives with her family. She resents having to go to Japanese school, where she is expected to behave like an obedient and demure young lady. Sone feels that she develops two personalities: one for her English grammar school and the other for Japanese school and visits from her mother’s strict Japanese friends, like Mrs. Matsui. Nevertheless, Sone enjoys participating in Japanese events, including the annual undo-kai picnic, and is excited for the family’s visit to Japan.