We Are Not Strangers Book Talk with Josh Tuininga, Toby Asai Loftus, and Ellen Eisenberg

Presented in partnership with the Japanese American Museum of Oregon

May 26, 2024 | 2 pm | RSVP at bottom of page

We Are Not Strangers is a historical fiction graphic novel written and illustrated by Josh Tuininga. Inspired by a true story, the book follows a Jewish immigrant’s efforts to help his Japanese neighbors while they are incarcerated during World War II. We Are Not Strangers converges two perspectives into a single portrait of a community’s struggle with race, responsibility, and what it truly means to be an American.

Join us for a discussion between the book’s author and illustrator, Josh Tuininga; writer and speaker Toby Asai Loftus; and Ellen Eisenberg, a consulting scholar for the graphic novel and preeminent historian on Jews in the Pacific West. We Are Not Strangers is available for purchase in the OJMCHE museum shop.

This program is co-presented by the Japanese American Museum of Oregon in honor of Jewish American Heritage Month and Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage Month.

Josh Tuininga is an author, artist, and designer living in North Bend, Washington. After studying fine art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, he founded an art and design agency, where he continues to work as its creative director. His work has been published in Communication Arts magazine and HOW Design magazine, and he was awarded with the Communication Arts Award for excellence in illustration. Tuininga is the author of the children’s books Why Blue? (Xist Publishing, 2014) and Dream On (Indiegogo campaign, 2019). We Are Not Strangers, which has been awarded a 4Culture Heritage Grant, is his first graphic novel.

Toby Asai Loftus is a third generation Japanese American. His mother, Mitzi Asai Loftus, was born and raised in Hood River, OR by Japanese immigrant farmers. She is the  youngest of eight children and at 91 years old is the last living family member of that generation. As a 4th-6th grader, Mitzi was incarcerated with her family and 120,000 others during World War II in U.S. prison camps. Her memoir From Thorns To Blossoms was published by OSU Press in March, 2024. Both Toby and Mitzi have given talks on this history, hosted by McMenamins History Talks, Race Talks, Take PART Portland, The Immigrant Story, City of Tigard, and more. Toby is an employee of the City of Tigard and member of the Equity Advisory Committee, a 20-year musician with the Newport Symphony, and an avid traveler and blogger.

Ellen Eisenberg is the Dwight and Margaret Lear Professor of American History at Willamette University in Salem, Oregon, where she has taught since 1990. Her research centers on the history of American immigrant and ethnic communities, particularly American Jewish communities. Since the mid-1990s, she has focused on Jews in the Pacific West, with an emphasis on relationships between Jews and other minority ethnic groups. She has written four monographs on Jews in the West, as well as publishing a number of articles and book chapters. The First to Cry Down Injustice? Western Jews and Japanese Removal during WWII (2008), was a National Jewish Book Award finalist. Her two-volume history of Jews in Oregon was published in 2015 and 2016.