I haven't checked the weather yet, but I know it is the perfect day to chat about adult Jewish literature. I'm Sheryl Stahl. Thanks for joining me here at nice Jewish books. Hi, I am really pleased to welcome author and artist, Josh Tuininga to speak about his graphic novel. We are not strangers. So welcome, Josh. And would you please tell me about your book.
So this project originated from a story my uncle Marco told me about attending his papa whose funeral. It was a typical Sephardic Jewish event until a handful of Japanese American guests arrived. Nobody knew who they were or why they came. But what my uncle Marco found out is that his papa would help these families when they were forced out of the neighborhood and incarcerated during World War Two. So it, only took a few minutes for him to tell me but for the next few days, I just couldn't stop thinking about it. How does Jewish immigrant with families still overseas threatened by the Holocaust, and up helping out his Japanese American neighbors here at home? So this book is about the type of environment that can create this remarkable kind of relationship and my family connection to to Seattle, in the central district and that unique environment?
Yeah, I thought it was a beautiful book. It's a wonderful story, and just beautiful drawings and illustrations, and we'll talk more about all of it. So the two big pieces were the Sephardic community and your great uncle and, and then the Japanese community. I don't know if people know that there was a large Sephardic community in Seattle. Can you talk about how the community got there? And what life was like there?
Yeah, well, when I first heard this story, I didn't know anything about this. I'm not a historian by any means. But I as I started researching, and I ended up talking with historians, I started learning a lot more about the connection between the Sephardic Jews who emigrated to Seattle, as well as the Japanese Americans who came here, and they had a lot in common things like, you know, the, the Pike Place Market here in Seattle is pretty famous for its fishing markets. And that was a big draw for people who learned who knew how to fish and immigrants, who knew how to fish would gather there. I mean, before the Japanese Americans were incarcerated, I think it was four fifths of the fishing markets and Pike Place were Japanese. And similarly, the Sephardic Jews had, you know, they were a big part of that community as well. So I think that's one of the main things as along with many. And, you know, the cool thing about this book is the the afterword was written by one of the historians I worked with. And that's just, it's a really fascinating look at the history and the complexity of that time period. So I thought that was a really nice addition.
And that was one thing that your two main characters had in common. Your great uncle Marco Calvo, and the Japanese characters, Sam Akiyama. I hope I'm not mangling that too much. That they were both fishermen; that Marco had come from a fishing village in Turkey. And similarly, Sam had come from a fishing village and his family come from a fishing village in Japan. Okay, so you mentioned the Japanese internment, which is such a horrible part of the United States history. Would you talk more about exactly what that was?
Yeah, after, after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, you know, the Japanese community was forced into incarceration camps. All over, there was 10 camps, you know, in Seattle was in particular central district, which is where this story where the story takes place, you know, the Japanese community there was, I think, the second largest in the in the US at the time before the incarcerations happened. And this, the central district was a it was just a really unique place, because this is where all minorities immigrants would settle, where they were blocked from living elsewhere. They could call their home, you know, in the central district and Seattle. So that all changed during the incarceration camps when the Japanese were forced to move. And yeah, I mean, like I said, I, you know, as a child, I learned, I barely learned about this topic in school. And so as I researched this project, I was surprised to learn that things like I think 120,000 citizens were put into camps, not one of those.
They, and the key word is citizens. Really,
I think two thirds of them or American born citizens, which is just shocking. So that was just kind of the it was it's I feel like it's just a big gap in our education system. Right, you just kind of, I mean, the other thing that I thought that was really interesting for me was, you know, you learn how we're taught history in school is like I learned about, briefly the incarceration camps, but and then you learn about the Holocaust. But as a child, little did I know that these were happening simultaneously. And it's like, it's kind of shocking that even as an adult, I didn't really put that together. And I think this is a really unique story in that it just kind of shows those, the juxtaposition of those things happening at the same time and the complexity of that, especially with the Marco character, because he's a Jewish immigrant who has an ally with us. But he's watching his neighbor and friend being taken from his home at the same time. And so it's, it's not, it's just so black and white for him. Right?
Right at the same time, and also, he still has family, in Turkey and in Europe. So he's worried about them being taken from their homes. And, you know, and, you know, eventually we knew that many were murdered. So it's that another parallel there of seeing things happening here that he was worried about overseas. But on the other hand, so as much as he was struggling with this, and trying to figure out how he could help his Japanese neighbors, he didn't want to be seen as helping them because he was worried that people wouldn't think he was supporting the war effort. Which he was
no, no, no, no. No, yeah. I mean, I think that's, that's just another layer of complexity there. I mean, there, there was such a strong movement to, you know, with propaganda posters everywhere, and just, you know, everybody doing their part. And, you know, don't talk to you know, that, you know, speak speak English in public. I mean, even the job on the Japanese side. Yeah. I mean, it was just, it was so layered of a, of a complex time. And, and, yeah, I think that it was just really interesting to explore the interesting thing to explore.
So, in your book, you sprinkled Marco's conversations with his family with Ladino, which is sort of based on Castilian, Spanish with little bits of Arabic and other languages. Did you grow up hearing Ladino,
just a little bit things like, you know, my grandma, so my grandparents, one of much was Ashkenazi, when the other one was Sephardic, which was I apparently, when they were married, that was a big nono at the time. But yeah, my grandfather was Sephardic. And yeah, he would, there was just little, small little thing. They didn't speak it really, at all. But I'd hear little teeny small little phrases here and there. And I incorporated some of those things in the book. And then I tried to do I mean, since the character is a first generation immigrant, I tried to do put as much of that some of that language stuff in there and have it translated in the notes, and, yeah, I think that just kind of gives you a good kind of indication of where these people came from. And then the newspaper he reads at the time, is the dino newspaper. And that's kind of Yeah, it's it's really interesting language because it's written in Hebrew, but sounds like Spanish and so yeah
Well, the newspapers are actually something else I was going to ask you about, because all through the book you show, either either of the characters reading a newspaper or newspaper stand. So you have the Japanese and Ladino and Jewish and secular newspapers with the various headlines. How did you gather up those headlines together?
That's a great question. I that was kind of an accident as far as like, an outline tool for my my story. I like I said, I, when I started this project, I was starting from scratch, I didn't know much about the history and the time period. And so one of the first places I started was digging up newspaper articles from the old Seattle Times Seattle star. And, and as I started doing that, I was like, Oh, this would be really interesting. I mean, that since this, I mean, I grew up when I grew up, my grandfather was always reading the newspaper, that's like, I always saw him doing that. And I was like, Oh, this is such a nice character trait from somebody from then. And so I just started using those headlines to orient myself as well as the reader. So I think it's just kind of a good way to use those headlines to kind of tell the story in another way as well. And I think that's a really cool thing about just graphic novels and comics storytelling is that you can do stuff like that you can have like these really interesting visual in one little panel you can have like, like you said, a headline of this, like a really important period of time. And it just kind of explains a lot about the setting because you know, I love a lot of the newspaper articles I chose were, you know, they fit the care, the chapter that I was working around, you know, or the theme.
So, then you can see the character's reaction as they're reading the page.
Right, right? That's cool. You know, that's cool. You noticed that?
I interviewed another graphic novelist, Eric Glickman who did Camp Pock-a-Wacknee. Totally different type of work. And we spoke about how the size and shapes of the panels influence how you read and view the page. So on page 77, if you had written it, it would have said something like Marco went to his office, pulled out a file, sharpened his pencil and cleaned his glasses, which is like a totally boring list of actions. But seeing the image of his hands, performing each of these actions in a separate panel, you know, shows a little bit more of the time it took to do all these things. And it just makes it more visceral, like you're a fly on the wall, or you can almost see your own hands doing it since you don't see his whole body, you just see his hands. How do you work these things out in your head of what to show and how that changes the pacing?
Wow, that's great question. I wish there was a really clear answer. But I think it's trial and error. I think that like that scene in particular, it comes after a point of some sort of contention and, and confusion and uncertainty. And I think I just kind of wanted to really draw out that tension and the pacing and kind of create a sense of like, time, you know, confusion almost for the reader as well. I think that's the point in the book where the even the reader is kind of like, what's going to happen here. And so I think that, you know, that that I think that's just a good way of doing that. Sometimes, sometimes I do something like that, and it just seems to work. Sometimes it seems to fail. I'm just I'm sure that's the same with writing in general. But, but there's a lot of things you can I mean, there's a lot of subtle things, I don't know if you notice, but even when you can see where the panels, like bleed out into the edges, for instance of the page that can kind of create a more impact or, you know, a really sense of setting, stuff like that. So yeah, that's, that's really I love, I love that you noticing those details. That's great.
Well, I loved your book. Okay, so we've hinted that he did something to help. Do you want to talk about what he did? Or is that a spoiler and people will just have to buy the book?
Ah, no, I think that I'm happy to talk about it. But I think that the main thing about this story since since, you know, as I just looked into the central district, I started researching more and more, I started to figure to hear about more and more stories of people who did reach out and help their Japanese American neighbors during that time. I'm in the central district is super unique, like we discussed, because there's so many different cultures with similar histories that, you know, are probably more willing to reach out and help each other. And yeah, so as far as what actually happened, I ended up really weaving in a lot of oral histories and a lot of different scenarios to create this, this historical fiction story. And, you know, what, what happens in the story is what happened? You know, I incorporate a lot of little details, what happened to it and what happened to people in other stories? So yeah, I don't know if that really answers your question. But I can try again.
You didn't say what he actually did that you showed him doing in the book..
Right, I see. Okay, so.
So that's why I was wondering if it was too much of a spoiler.
I mean, it's kind of as well, so yeah, so I guess I don't know. I mean, what do you think? I mean, I think that he, as far as the story goes, that I was told about the true story of one of my uncle's grandfather is that he helped out these families by renting out their homes and collecting rent money and keeping their business afloat, so that when they came back, they still had a house to come home to. And that that was just extremely rare at the time, most of the people who were incarcerated, lost everything. Some people fell homeless, they came back to bigotry and and they came back to something just like almost insurmountable to come back to. So these stories that, you know, where people reached out to help. They even even in the smallest way, they had a huge impact on these families. And like I said, I researched and found a lot of different stories from the Central District of people who did reach out and help at that time, and I was able to kind of incorporate little details of all those stories into this historical fiction narrative.
You als o included quite a bit of humor into the book, well, why was that important to you?
Oh
It had me giggling at points.
Really, Can you tell me one of the specific times I'm curious.
One of them was in the, in the synagogue in the women's section, they started whispering to each other, and then other women started shushing them. And pretty soon everyone is, you know, whispering and shushing, and the shushing is louder than the whispering and you can see the rabbi's getting into.
Yeah, well, that's the you know, all those little anecdotes. You know, I incorporate that stuff, because it just, it's, it's just how it's just true to life, right. I mean, that story was an oral history that I heard from someone as a friend of my mother's who, who told me this, you know, that exact story from her childhood. And, you know, when I heard those hear those stories, it just makes me excited to incorporate those in and, and try to convey that. Just because, you know, even in tragedy, there are funny moments. And there are, you know, you know, we've all experienced that before, so I think it's just as a realistic,
it just read, so true to me when I was doing on the other one was with the girl in Sam's house when she was "why", and he would answer and then "why," you know, and every time he told her the next part, you know, as why, why it's like, okay, I remember those days,
that's just kind of pulled from my own kids, I think just kind of their inquisitive nature, and patience of the Father explaining something.
So we mentioned that you had writing because of the headlines. So you're obviously some most of it's in English characters, but also in Hebrew and in Japanese. Do you know any Japanese? So did you have to have help? I assume those are actual characters, and not just pretty lines?
Yeah, I have a lot of help ... I every time I, you know, that was probably the best part of this entire project was meeting with people every time I ran into an issue or something like that, where I need to, you know, even just something writing the script correctly, I would meet with a historian or somebody who a friend of mine that speak Japanese, or even just how the characters were designed, and, you know, making sure that that that looks okay, for the culture that outfits people are wearing. You know, so I, yeah, this every time I'd meet with somebody, I might get, like, a little detail to throw into a panel somewhere, because I just wanted to just kind of just remember that, but sometimes I meet with somebody and have it like, that's gonna be a whole new chapter, you know. So, I mean, the chapter you mentioned about Sam kind of explaining the art piece in his house about his his grandfather's history came from me going to looking for an origin story for this character and going to a friend of my family, friends, Japanese art gallery, and going through some woodblock prints and finding out those finding out what what to use and and those woodblock prints actually hang in my kitchen, because I'm so attached to them. So those are the kinds of things like, you know, meeting with people and getting feedback, even the smallest detail, like you said, just like a little bit of writing just goes a long way.
Which part was the most challenging to put together?
Oh, that's good. I think that just the most challenging, interesting, I mean, challenging in the way of, you know, at first, I might say drawing and inking and all that because it's just kind of, it's kind of a long process. But honestly, it, I think that's kind of what it started with, because I was like, This is gonna be kind of a long, big project to kind of tackle. But as I got into it, the writing, since that's kind of new to me, became the biggest challenge. And once I had written my script, storyboarded it out and was finally able to start penciling and inking that was kind of like a really nice relaxing point, because I was like, okay, I can finally put this on the page. But yeah, the writing the dialogue, stuff like that. The research stuff was really, I wouldn't say challenging. It was it was just kind of time consuming. But that was turned out to be pretty fun. But yeah, I'd say the writing
Just to mention your drawings, I got a an advanced reader copy. And so the, it was all in grayscale. And I thought they were beautiful. And then I got to the last page where there's a note from the publisher saying, Oh, the book will be in full color. You know, so on the cover. It's full color, and it's just beautiful, soft, kind of muted tones. But the grayscale was beautiful on its own too.
Oh, well. Yeah, that's that's been a very interesting part of the process. When I got in when I got my publisher at Abrams comic arts. They were interested in the story and I always, always pictured it as black and white. But they encouraged me to think about color. And we found an incredible colorist named Avery Bacon who's, they just did an incredible job with the color. There's different palettes for different time periods. And I feel like the the palette really just, it really just feels like Seattle during the time. It's just has that feel. So yeah, I'm extremely happy happy with the caller and really thankful for,
So you mentioned that you did a lot of research. Was there anything in your research that surprised you?
Yeah, I think that, like I said, the biggest surprise for me was how valuable research can be to a project. I think I as I would research, that just the, the more I researched, the more rich and more meaningful this project became. And, you know, I think at the beginning, I kind of was hesitant to research because I just wanted to start drawing and just get busy and get doing it. But every time I ran into a landmark, I'd be like, Okay, I'm going to really, I'm going to read a newspaper article, or I'm gonna go, you know, call somebody up and see if they know anybody that had that has a connection with the synagogue in this area or whatever. And every time I did that, not only what I my story get richer, but I was like, just shocked by every person I talked about. But like that's, that could be a graphic novel in itself. This story, you're telling me right? So it made me excited about doing more of this? And yeah, so I think that that was the biggest surprise for me, like, just kind of pretending I was a journalist just became really, really fun.
So you mentioned that you had to develop your character's backstory. So was there anything that you had developed that did not actually make it into the book?
Oh, my gosh, so many things. That's one thing I feel like I need to get better at. I feel like, especially as an artist, when I'm drawing, a lot of times I catch myself going on a tangent, even drawing out the full chapter and then finding out later that this is actually not the right way to go. So specifically, you know, even things like my uncle, who is the kind of the, you know, it starts the story off by going to this funeral and finding out what his grandfather did. I had a bunch of scenes around him as a character in his life now and stuff like that, and it just didn't seem relevant. So I kind of removed it. And yeah, I mean, I'd say, as far as writing goes, you know, maybe at least half of the stuff I wrote just didn't make an end of the book, because it just didn't really make sense. So editing was a challenge, but I think it's probably maybe the most important thing.
Yeah, I've heard that from other authors as well. So do you have any projects in the works that you would like to mention?
You know, I have a couple things I'm doing. I'm working on another family story. And I'm also I'm also excited about doing fiction work as well. So I'm just kind of I'm nothing, nothing really specific. But I'm just kind of all over the place trying to land somewhere.
Sounds good. And then is there anything you would like to answer or address that I haven't thought to ask.
I guess the only thing I would think to mention about this book, which I think is a really nice addition is that all this research that I did, and you know, conversations and interviews I had throughout the process of the book, a lot all my notes and researcher are included in the back matter of the book. So I think it's a really nice tool for educators, but also for anybody else who wants to just dive a little bit deeper into the history and the time period. So I wanted to mention that.
if someone were to use your book as a call to action for tikun olam for repairing the world, or if you would just like this time is a soapbox moment to say any of your favorite causes. What would that be?
Yeah, I think that one of the main things that I'd want to say about this book is, it seems like nowadays, we're almost encouraged to look at each other as strangers and people are pretty divided. Even sometimes our neighbors can be looked at as to not to be trusted. And I just hope that this book kind of acts as a reminder that it doesn't really have to be that way. In my experience, I live in a pretty rural area. And not everyone in my community sees eye to eye on every issue. But I've found that if I reach out to people that, you know, might not agree with me on everything that I feel like I can always find some sort of common ground. And I think that's, I think that's really powerful. And so, yeah, I think that's maybe a good takeaway.
Wonderful,
so if people would like to connect with you, what is the best way?
Well, you can go to my website, Josh T U I N I N G A.com Contact me there. And yeah, I'd be happy to hear from anybody that has interested in the project and wants to learn more.
Wonderful. Well, thank you Josh Tuininga for speaking with me about We are not Strangers.
Thank you so much for having me. This has been a lot of fun. And yeah, thanks again for looking at the project. So in such detail, it's really neat. I think it's really easy for people to blow through a graphic novel and not even really notice the artwork. So I really appreciate that.
Nope, that's the part I love about it is the mingling of the two ways of communication Well, thanks again. If you are interested in any of the books we discussed today, you can find them at your favorite physical or online bookstore or at your local library. Thanks to Die Yankee for use of their freilich, which definitely makes me happy. This podcast is a project of the Association of Jewish libraries, and you can find it at Jewish libraries.org/niceJewishbooks. If you would like to support this podcast, please click on the donate button in the top left corner of the podcast page, or the link in the show notes. I would like to thank ajl and my podcast mentor, Heidi Rabinowitz Keep listening for the promo for her latest episode of our sister podcast, the book of life, a show about Jewish kidlet Mostly.
Hi, this is Josh Levy, author of Pajek show. I'll be joining you soon on the Book of Life podcast. I'd like to dedicate my episode to Chris Barron and Naomi milliner to other Jewish middle grade authors. We are co editors on a Passover anthology projects together titled on all overnights I couldn't ask for better partners or better friends.
The Book of Life is the sister podcast of nice Jewish books. I'm your host Heidi Rabinowitz and my podcast about Jewish kidlet. Join me to hear my August 2023 conversation with Josh levy about the Jake show
