In the tradition of eyewitness accounts, Farewell to Manzanar convinces readers through a sincere, objective recounting of events in the girlhood of Jeanne Wakatsuki. As historically correct as Samuel Pepys' recollections of the London fire and the restoration of Charles II to the throne of England, as passionately devoted to righting injustice as Elie Wiesel's Night, as tenderly innocent and family centered as The Diary of Anne Frank, the Houstons' book earns critical acclaim for verisimilitude. Notable critics have placed the book in its own niche; a Los Angeles Times reporter praised Jeanne for serving as a "voice for a heretofore silent segment of society." Others have similar praise.
Writer-critic Wallace Stegner typifies the work as "a wonderful, human, feeling book . . . touching, funny, affectionate, sad, eager, and forgiving. And full of understanding . . . [it] manages to become a scale model of all our lives."
In a vivid personal response for The Nation (November 9, 1974), Dorothy Bryant makes a significant delineation between the book and other autobiographical journeys: "The Houstons are not simply trying to communicate facts as Jeanne knew them, but were themselves on a search to touch the truth of her experience, to examine it, and to understand it wholly. The great strength of the book is the sense it gives the reader of being allowed to accompany Jeanne on this most personal and intimate journey."
Katherine Anderson of Library Journal (January 15, 1974) lauds the way in which Jeanne candidly divulges "the psychological impact of being Japanese in California during World War II," yet avoids self-pity and bitterness.
A terse, unsigned review in the New York Times Book Review (November 5, 1973) notes the devastating effects of Jeanne's "spiritual death" under tense camp conditions. The critique concludes: "Although there are brief re-creations of some of the internal ferment at the camp, the deeper political and social implications of Manzanar are largely ignored . . . [this] book [however] provides an often vivid, impressionistic picture of how the forced isolation affected the internees. All in all, a dramatic, telling account of one of the most reprehensible events in the history of America's treatment of its minorities."
An unsigned review in the New Yorker (January 13, 1974) concurs that "a particularly ignominious chapter in our history is recounted with chilling simplicity by an internee," particularly in its detailed dissection of Ko, who "was too old to bend with the humiliations of the camp. . . . His story is at the heart of this book, and his daughter tells it with great dignity."
Equally impressed by the unenhanced memoir is Helen Rabinowitz in her review for Saturday Review (November 6, 1973): "Mrs. Houston and her husband have recorded a tale of many complexities in a straightforward manner, a tale remarkably lacking in either self-pity or solemnity. It is the record of one woman's maturation during a unique historical moment."
Michael Rogers, reviewing for Rolling Stone (December 6,1973), concludes that the book "avoids sentimentality, however, by remaining true to its intention: to illuminate at once the experience of a people, of a family, and of an individual."
In a more scholarly appraisal, Anthony Friedson delineates the Houstons' reflective book on three levels: first, an overview of war hysteria; second, an episode in American assimilation; third, a coming-of-age narrative focusing on Jeanne's growing-up years. Produced to fill a void, the book, intended as polemic, or aggressive statement of opinion, on a controversial issue, authenticates a significant page in America's history, a confrontation with the bedrock issues of freedoms as old as the Magna Carta and guaranteed in the Constitution. Because no previous work dealt so intimately with the denial of freedoms to Asian Americans, the Houstons' research lays the groundwork for more scholarship and narrative as a means to greater understanding of racism.
Not only does the work illuminate the political maneuverings which cost 120,000 innocent people over three years of unconstitutional incarceration, it also details the social mechanisms by which people cope with arbitrary uprooting, loss, privation, and national embarrassment. Told in readable, accessible form, the book skirts a more academic approach by relying on first-person narration from a child's perspective. Chronologically, the work concludes, not with the closing of the internment camp, but with the marriage of Jeanne to a Caucasian. In a healing, unifying return to Manzanar, the speaker creates a conciliatory tone, a method of ridding herself of lingering regrets and bitterness and of assisting her race and her nation to reflect on an episode as shattering and dismaying as the massacre at Wounded Knee, the Salem witch trials, Nat Turner's rebellion, John Brown's hanging, the Battle of the Little Big Horn, the Watts, Attica Prison, and Los Angeles riots, the exploitation of coolie labor to build the transcontinental railroad, or the My Lai massacre.
