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Quote by Traci Chee

“There's things I'm never gonna forget, like the sight of the Japantown boys running down Buchanan Street or the first time I saw Keiko laughing in the snow, and I know that this is gonna be one of 'em”

Quote by Traci Chee

Book:We Are Not Free
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We Are Not Free

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Traci Chee

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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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“This is the creature there has never been. They never knew it, and yet, none the less, they loved the way it moved, its suppleness, its neck, its very gaze, mild and serene. Not there, because they loved it, it behaved as though it were. They always left some space. And in that clear unpeopled space they saved it lightly reared its head, with scarce a trace of not being there. They fed it, not with corn, but only with the possibility of being. And that was able to confer such strength, its brow put forth a horn. One horn. Whitely it stole up to a maid - to be within the silver mirror and in her.”

Poetry
Author:Rainer Maria Rilke
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“Bel chose, and she chose right this time. Head and heart and gut. She closed the gap between her and Rachel, eyes fixing on the key, watering because she couldn't blink, blink and everything might disappear. Bel reached out, fingers gliding through the air, a shiver as she touched the skin of Rachel's palm. Warm, not cold. She closed Rachel's hand around the key, into a fist. Skin to skin, bone to bone. Held it there, tight. Eyes on her mom's. She chose her.”

Sad
Author:Holly Jackson
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