Kiku Hughes

Kiku Hughes is a cartoonist and illustrator whose work has been featured in Beyond Anthology volumes 1 and 2, Short Box #6 and the Alloy Anthology. She creates stories about identity, queer romance and compassionate sci-fi. Displacement (First Second) is her first graphic novel, and it is a story she’s wanted to share for as long as she can remember. A teenager is pulled back in time to witness her grandmother’s experiences in World War II-era Japanese internment camps. Kiku is on vacation in San Francisco when suddenly she finds herself displaced to the 1940s Japanese-American internment camp that her late grandmother, Ernestina, was forcibly relocated to during World War II. These displacements keep occurring until Kiku finds herself “stuck” back in time. Living alongside her young grandmother and other Japanese-American citizens in internment camps, Kiku gets the education she never received in history class. She witnesses the lives of Japanese-Americans who were denied their civil liberties and suffered greatly, but managed to cultivate community and commit acts of resistance in order to survive. Hughes’s tale highlights the intergenerational impact and the power of memory. John Jennings, artist of kindred: a graphic novel adaptation, called Displacement “Poignant and powerful…a work of art that is both timely and timeless.”