extended through June 7, 2021
The Cartoon Art Museum, Top Shelf Productions and IDW Publishing proudly present They Called Us Enemy featuring artist Harmony Becker’s artwork from the acclaimed graphic memoir written by actor, author, and activist George Takei in which Takei revisits his haunting childhood in American concentration camps, as one of 120,000 Americans imprisoned by the U.S. government during World War II. The exhibition includes an inside look at Becker’s creative process, including excerpts from her reference library and never before seen preparatory illustrations.
When cartoonist Art Spiegelman received a Pulitzer Prize in 1992 for Maus, his graphic memoir about the Holocaust, he brought critical attention to the form and helped elevate it to a respectable literary genre. Darkly funny, intensely personal, and visually dynamic, Forney’s graphic memoir provides a visceral glimpse into the effects of a mood disorder on the artist’s work. Her story seeks the answer to this question: if there's a correlation between creativity and mood.
This exhibition also features a selection of original artwork from the Cartoon Art Museum’s permanent collection, including comic strips and animation from the 1940s, providing patrons with a snapshot of popular entertainment on the home front during the second World War.
- This is a queer graphic memoir which traces the steps of a life lived, as well as one explored and tested. The journey to understanding Maia’s own non-binary identity and asexuality, while traversing a gendered and binary world, is a fascinating one.
- A graphic memoir about the treatment of mental illness, treating mental illness as a commodity, and the often unavoidable choice between sanity and happiness. In her early twenties in New York City, diagnosed with bipolar disorder, Rachel Lindsay takes a job in advertising in order to secure healthcare coverage for her treatment.
- One of the easiest ways to describe a graphic memoir is to say it is a memoir written and illustrated using the same general format found in a graphic novel. In short, both the words and the pictures are crucial to telling the story.
Wall of Remembrance
Personal photos and/or names of families that were relocated to internment camps will be added to the They Called Us Enemy exhibition where they will be on display for the duration of the exhibition until May 17, 2020.
If you would like to send a photo or name to be included, you may do so in person at the museum or post photos or names on social media and tag...
Facebook: @Cartoon Art Museum
Instagram: @cartoonartmuseum on
Twitter: @cartoonart
Graphic Memoir About Being A Mom
and use the hashtags: #theycalledusenemy
Names will be written on tags similar to the ones that internees had to wear for identification to acknowledge the terrible actions those individuals and families endured.
About They Called Us Enemy
A stunning graphic memoir recounting actor/author/activist George Takei's childhood imprisoned within American concentration camps during World War II. Experience the forces that shaped an American icon—and America itself—in this gripping tale of courage, country, loyalty, and love.
George Takei has captured hearts and minds worldwide with his captivating stage presence and outspoken commitment to equal rights. But long before he braved new frontiers in the Star Trek TV series in the 1960s, he woke up as a four-year-old boy to find his own birth country at war with his father's—and their entire family forced from their home into an uncertain future.
In 1942, at the order of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, every person of Japanese descent on the west coast was rounded up and shipped to one of ten 'relocation centers,' hundreds or thousands of miles from home, where they would be held for years under armed guard.
They Called Us Enemy is Takei's firsthand account of those years behind barbed wire, the joys and terrors of growing up under legalized racism, his mother's hard choices, his father's faith in democracy, and the way those experiences planted the seeds for his astonishing future.
What does it mean to be American? Who gets to decide? When the world is against you, what can one person do? To answer these questions, George Takei joins co-writers Justin Eisinger & Steven Scott and artist Harmony Becker for the journey of a lifetime.
Graphic Memoir
Organization and Funding
Graphic Novel Memoir
The Cartoon Art Museum’s exhibition of They Called Us Enemy: A Graphic Memoir is organized by The Cartoon Art Museum, with the assistance of Top Shelf Productions and IDW Publishing.