Sylvia and Aki Themes, Symbols and Motifs
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Sylvia & Aki by Winifred Conkling
By Liane Hicks
Sylvia & Aki is an award winning, historical fiction novel written in 2015. It tells the true story of an unexpected friendship between Sylvia Mendez and Aki Munemitsu, who found themselves at the center of two different systems of injustice in the United States in the 1940s. Engage and educate students with Storyboard That premade activities!
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Storyboard Description
Students can track the different themes, symbols and motifs present in the novel and create a spider map that labels, defines and illustrates them.
Storyboard Text
- HANDS
- RACISM
- Westminster Main School
- Both girls notice how their fathers are hard working farmers who use their hands to cultivate the land and provide for their families. Their mothers use their hands for sewing, cooking, and braiding hair. Sylvia wonders why the color of her hands matters when she compares them to her cousins, who would would have been accepted to Westminster school because they looked more "white".
- The Munemitsus are imprisoned by the government simply for being of Japanese descent. The Mendez children are not allowed to go to the Westminster public school simply because they are of Mexican descent. The novel highlights how white supremacy and racism are rooted in U.S. history and the people who have fought for equality and freedom.
- POSTON INTERNMENT CAMP
- FENCES
- SYLVIA & AKI: Themes, Symbols and Motifs
- DOLLS
- Fences are seen throughout the novel and symbolize the barriers to freedom and equality for the protagonists. There is an electric fence that surrounds the Hoover school and it shocks one of the students who touches it on a dare. Fences also surround the internment camp to imprison the Japanese Americans held there.
- Sylvia and Aki's dolls, Keiko, the Japanese doll, and Carmencita, the Mexican doll, are recurring motifs and symbolize Sylvia & Aki's friendship. Each girl is glad and honored in the end to have a doll that represents their friend's race, culture, and heritage.
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