It Rhymes with Takei

by Kevin Wolf

Content advisory: It Rhymes with Takei has one occurrence of domestic violence when Takei is attacked by an early partner. National Domestic Violence Hotline in the United States is 800-799-7233; text 988; or use this weblink, https://www.thehotline.org/. In Canada use https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/health-promotion/stop-family-violence/services.html. In the UK use https://www.nationaldahelpline.org.uk/. And elsewhere in the world, one could use https://www.nomore.org/the-no-more-global-directory/, https://www.domesticshelters.org/resources/national-global-organizations/international-organizations, or https://www.theamieffect.com/global-directory-of-abuse-helplines/.

George Takei has now written four autobiographies in three different artistic forms. I only know about his first one[i] because I was doing research for another of my multi-book reviews that I hope to complete someday, which involved reading a biography[ii] of his anti-nuclear weapons’ activist aunt, Setsuko Nakamura Thurlow, a Hiroshima bomb survivor. I reviewed two of his memoirs—an award-winning graphic novel (They Called Us Enemy) and a children’s picture book (My Lost Freedom)—earlier this year. And now Takei has teamed up again with his graphic novelists (Writer: George Takei; Adaptors: Justin Eisinger and Steven Scott; and Art: Harmony Becker) to write about his coming out journey. Though it’s not heavily medical, this graphic novel shows Takei’s journey was anxiety-ridden. From Takei’s most recent memoir, It Rhymes with Takei, we have an abbreviated history of LGBTQIAP+ activism from the Stonewall Riots, HIV/AIDS epidemic, domestic partnerships, legislative and court decisions, early backlash, marriage equality through more backlash today. Takei doesn’t pathologize his homosexuality, but shows repeatedly that he remained in the closet for so long—until age 68—because of societal pressures, his acting career concerns, WWII trauma of incarceration, family matters and that he never sought a healthcare solution to his anxiety. I highly recommend It Rhymes with Takei, for the delightful person Takei is, his honesty and his story, the history of LGBTQIAP+, and the lessons learned along the way.

There are several differences between They Called Us Enemy and It Rhymes with Takei. They Called Us Enemy covers Takei’s youth (mainly ages five through eight) and his family’s unjust incarceration during World War II. That memoir was drawn in black and white. His adulthood was covered to the extent that that early incarceration still played a roll. Those adult events included speeches he made and a congressional hearing he attended to help successfully seek reparations on behalf of his family and all those U.S. Japanese descended incarcerated people’s (more than 120,000) remaining survivors (over 80,000). Whereas It Rhymes with Takei barely mentions his family’s WWII incarceration (e.g. in the chronology when They Called Us Enemy was published), but instead emphasizes his early anxiety and later pride in being a gay man. To reinforce that pride, this new memoir is drawn in color with its cover emphasizing the LGBTQIAP+ rainbow flag colors and seeing Takei at various stages of his life leaving through the closet door.

It Rhymes with Takei opens with Takei making the rounds of talk shows with a reverse argument about grooming. While on the talk show The View he’s asked, “George you’ve said that you were groomed your entire life … to be straight. And what happened?” And he responds, “Well … I happened! From about the time I was 9 years old, I knew I was different … Even before that … I was imprisoned by my own government because I was different [showing the cover of They Called Us Enemy in the background]. … But I wanted to be normal, so that I wasn’t imprisoned again for being different … and I spent most of my adult life closeted. [I came out] in 2005, very late [emphasis in original, pg. 9 – 11].” He’s asked, “So you can’t groom someone not to be gay” and Takei said, “Absolutely not. Society groomed me to be closeted [11].” And once out of the closet, Takei magnanimously offered to let his last name be used by Tennessee teachers (and elsewhere) when they’re not supposed to say “gay” as in when a teacher might mention the “Takei pride parade.” This is where the title It Rhymes with Takei comes from.

We watch two stories unfold concurrently. The first is Takei’s own and the second is that of the LGBTQIAP+ community’s.

After Takei’s family was released from the WWII incarceration camps, they lived in a Mexican American barrio in the Los Angelos area where Takei learned Spanish, while his parents taught him Japanese. We learn about Takei’s first kiss and his summer working alongside Mexican workers in the field picking strawberries and standing up for himself and those field workers. Takei won an American Legion award for volunteering. He points out that “the American Legion had been one of the most virulent voices for the removal of Japanese Americans from the West Coast [during WWII, 44].” Takei feels parental pressure to have a profession and temporarily quashes his own desire to be an actor. He graduates college with a major in architecture. He makes brief sexual encounter attempts, but the wider society creates barriers with Joseph McCarthy’s senate hearings and the House Un-American Activities Committee trying to make homosexuality a national security risk. And Takei feared that an innocent meet-up might be a nefarious attempt at outing him and destroying any future career. Takei becomes estranged to his brother, Henry, after coming out to him. This reinforced Takei’s anxiety-ridden life until much later in his adulthood—and I’m skipping a lot at this point—when he learned to accept himself just the way he was. You’ll have to read It Rhymes with Takei to fill in most of those missing personal parts, including how he got into acting and his career there; except to write he used his life’s frustrations to great emotional effect.

Regarding the LGBTQIAP+’s story, we learn about the Kinsey Reports on sexuality, civil rights, the 1969 Stonewall Riots, the HIV/AIDS epidemic (pp. 230 – 240), 1994 Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, civil unions, state referendums, legislative votes and Supreme Court decisions on marriage equality, LGBTQIAP+ rights, and the elections of Presidents Obama and Trump.

Takei takes up running “to celebrate life [242]” in part for his own health and to be a counterweight to the deaths of some of his friends during the AIDS epidemic. After same-sex marriage became legal and Takei came out and married his partner (Brad Altman) of over twenty years, they were the first same-sex married couple to appear on the Newlywed Game and they won!

It Rhymes with Takei provides an entertaining and worthwhile personal and societal history of some critical events surrounding LGBTQIAP+ rights. And full equality is still far from complete. The cover of It Rhymes with Takei is repeated on page 16 with George saying, “Now with this story told … I am the whole George Takei [16].”

[i] Takei, George. To the Stars: The Autobiography of George Takaui, Pocket Books, 1994.

[ii] Jacobs, Charlotte Decroes. 90 Seconds to Midnight – A Hiroshima Survivor’s Nuclear Odyssey, Potomac Books, imprint of University of Nebraska Press, 2025.