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Traci Chee Books

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The Speaker

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The Reader

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“But we never learn what it goes to show, because he never got to finish the letter. He never got to finish a lot of things. We want to say he died like a hero. We want to say he was brave until the end. And maybe he was. Maybe he was. But he was also just a kid. He was a scared kid who died far from home, in a country that wasn't his, a country that took his blood and his weight and is tears and didn't give him back to us.”

SadHeartbreaking
Book:We Are Not Free
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“Now Shig. Picture this: They stare at each other. From this angle, you can see how they fit together, these boys, like puzzle pieces, their elbows and shoulders modeled into one another by the years, the adventures, the skinned knees, the after school detentions. Then Twitchy tackles him. They're half hugging, half wrestling around the room, knocking into chairs and bed frames. Until they're not. Until they're just hugging, standing still in the middle of the barack, the world spins on around them, time slipping away from them, faster and faster, out of their control. Two boys who love each other, one going off to war.”

SadHearbreaking
Book:We Are Not Free
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“Banzai. The word rushes over me like a river. A memory of what we used to say on the streets of Japantown when we played at war. A memory we inherited from our fathers and their fathers, this word, this history, this giving of ourselves for the nation, for the emperor. Except now it's not for the emperor. I don't think, in this moment, that it's even for our nation. It's for us, our brothers, here, who have died on this hill and in dozens of battles before, for our families back home,in that dream-world of deserts and barbed wire, for our folks who had everything taken from them and still were asked for more: compliance, obedience, money, blood.”

SadHeartbreaking Love
Book:We Are Not Free
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“They're sending him to a hospital, then back home, and it's funny because I know he's lying on a cot somewhere with a roof over his head and some nurses checking his bandages or whatever, waiting to get well enough for the ship back to America, but to me it's like he's dead because--home? Thinking of home? It's like thinking of heaven. Someplace you hope you'll end up one day, but good luck, buddy, because you're a soldier, not a saint.”

SadHeartbreaking
Book:We Are Not Free
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“It isn't raining anymore. The rain has become soft and light and cold. It's snowing. Snowing. I'm thinking of Topaz and the first snow I ever saw, flakes tumbling lazily out of the sky and settling on the barracks and the dusty roads, so quiet. And the guys throwing snowballs.The numbness in your fingers, that wet slap in your side, Shig and Tommy and Minnow and Stan Katsumoto... Everyone running and shrieking with laughter. Mas, Frankie, Bette, Yum-Yum... Keiko laughing. Prettiest girl I ever saw, with snow like stars in her hair. I close my eyes, and I think I can hear us, all of us, running. The Topaz roads are turning into pavement, the barracks are turning into San Francisco, the desert air is turning wet and salty, and we're running, running until we hit the ocean, that roaring blue expanse, and all of us, running into waves. Laughing.”

SadHeartbreakingPlease Help Me
Book:We Are Not Free
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“There were three ways to kill a king: You could face him with all the force of your military might, and in the end one of you would fall. You could stab him from behind like a coward, cringing in the shadows. Or you could kill him slowly, from the inside out, so he wouldn't even know until it was too late. If you did your job right, he might even thank you for it. These were the differences between Soldiers, Assassins, and Politicians. Only Politicians did it with a certain flair.”

PoliticsKingsPoliticiansSoldiersAssassinsFlairPolitical IntrigueSchemeTo Kill A King
Book:The Speaker
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