Abstract
Although Miné Okubo is an American citizen and the events she records in Citizen 13660 took place on American soil, this essay will argue that her work is nevertheless a work of the contact zone. Furthermore, Okubo’s record of the internment of 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II can be usefully read and taught as an autoethnography that constructs a counterhistory of World War II. The juxtaposition of Okubo’s autobiographical record of her internment experience with a variety of “official” images can help students learn about the construction of knowledge. Such classroom work can help students “decolonize knowledge,” to borrow a phrase from Mary Louise Pratt, by demonstrating how knowledge is not neutral but is instead constructed by constituencies with a vested interested in how events are depicted.
Recommended Citation
Beadling, Laura L.
(2010)
"Imaging Internment:Teaching Miné Okubo's Citizen 13660 as a Work of Comics in the Contact Zone,"
SANE journal: Sequential Art Narrative in Education: Vol. 1:
Iss.
1, Article 5.
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/sane/vol1/iss1/5