Scarce first printing of Okubo's of Okubo's groundbreaking graphic memoir of her WWII internment.
Very good plus in very good jacket.
Price: $1,800.00
"Published in 1946 before the term 'graphic novel' was coined, Okubo's work foregrounds and prefigures the modern graphic novel." — Stella Oh
Based on her more than 2000 drawings produced while interred Topaz War Relocation Center in Utah (and subsequently winnowed down to roughly 200 for this book), Okubo's memoir is now rightly considered not only a classic document of Japanese internment, but a pioneering work in the still-burgeoning genre of the graphic novel. The book is increasingly scarce in its first edition. Many — given its university press origins — presumably went to libraries. And while the book was well-reviewed, remaining copies languished: "The War was forgotten [...] People were rebuilding their lives" (Okubo x). The book was not reprinted until the 1970s, but since that time its importance and influence has only grown. Scarce in jacket.
Read more: Oh, "Graphic Novelists," in Asian Americans: An Encyclopedia.
First edition. New York: Columbia University Press, 1946. 9.25'' x 6''. Original blue and grey pictorial cloth. In original price-clipped red dust jacket. Illustrated by Okubo in black and white throughout. [6], 210 pages. Ownership signature of American psychologist Harriet E. O'Shea on front free endpaper, dated 1946. Stain and small closed tear to front panel of jacket. A few small chips, toning. Book has slight lean. Overall, sound.
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