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"Why is it that in my freedom, I feel more imprisoned in the wrongness of myself and the thing I did than when I was in prison? Am I never really to know again what it is to be American? If there should be an answer, what is it? What penalty is it that I must pay to justify my living as I so fervently desire to? There is, I am afraid, no answer. There is no retribution for one who is guilty of treason, and that is what I am guilty of. The fortunate get shot. I must live my punishment."

No-No Boy wrecks my soul. It moves me in a way that no other class-required text has ever done. This book is not at all what I expected. I thought I was going into a story about a man totally confident in his decisions; a righteous resistance against the actions of the American government during Japanese internment.

No, no this isn't that kind of book at all. This is a story about a tortured man who views himself as unworthy of redemption; a man who must face against the world he denounced, believing himself to be a worthless burden. Ichiro is not a very likable protagonist. He's unjustifiably cruel at times, holding such a pessimistic attitude. Yet, when viewing the world through his perspective, it's not difficult to understand the source of his untamable anger. Ichiro shifts aimlessly between two identities actively hostile towards him. As an American, Ichiro is regarded as a traitor, a low-life unwilling to follow national orders. As a Japanese person, his community holds intense resentment, furious at his refusal to comply with the model-minority archetypes that have stabilized their lives.

Calling Ichiro a complex character is the understatement of the year. His haunting soliloquies invade your mind. It's going to take me a while to get over them. I mean, just look at this beast of a sentence:
"And, as his heart mercifully stacked the blocks of hope into the pattern of America which would someday hold an unquestioned place for him, his mind said no, it is not to be, and the castle tumbled and was swallowed up by the darkness of his soul, for time might cloud the memories of others but the trouble was inside of him and time would not soften that."

Quotes like that pop up every few pages. Like wow, I didn't think it was possible for an author to create banger, gut-wrenching lines this consistently. John Okada was a writer ahead of his time, and it breaks my heart that America simply wasn't ready to appreciate his work when it was first published. He deserves all the hard-earned praise.

I've spent so much time talking about Ichiro, but all the other characters in this novel are fantastic as well. We have Ichiro's mother; a woman filled with unshakable pride that her son resisted against American law; a woman blindly loyal to the fallen Japanese empire, one that Ichiro feels no connection to. We have Ichiro's father; a man that blames himself for the fallout of his family; a man who turns to drink instead of actively repairing the emotional walls arising between his wife and sons. Finally, we have Kenji, who my heart continues to yearn for. He's the stark contrast to Ichiro; a generally optimistic man who chose to fight in the war, losing his leg while doing so. His wound is a constant physical reminder of the choice he made; the choice to renounce his Japanese identity, and serve the country that imprisoned him and his community.

This novel accomplishes so much in barely over 200 pages. I wish I was shown Okada's work so much earlier. I wish I was better educated in high school about the true extent of internment on Japanese Americans. I wish this book was more well known outside the Asian-American literary canon. So please, I know I ask people to check out books a lot, but I truly, incandescently mean it this time. I don't care who you are, but No-No Boy is a novel you need to read.