Internment

Novels that look at the reach and power of social media are growing in number, given the relatively recent emergence of such communication networks. Internment, marketed as a Young Adult title, investigates the power of social media and how it enriches the responsibility of Millennials and Gen Z-ers to be a part of the real world. For many, social media is a distraction, a frivolous digital conversation about trivial concerns. Although Layla’s courageous defiance of the Director inspires the camp’s internees to action, it can be argued that her actions do not ultimately end with the closing of the camp and the liberation of the detainees. It is only through the broad reach of social media, sparked and then sustained by Layla’s writings that Jake and David smuggle out of the camp, that international protests finally move the President to halt the camp’s operations. Social media has given an entirely new meaning to the cliché of the media era: the whole world is watching.

It is one of the disturbing realities of history that the atrocities visited on the Jews and other marginalized groups by Nazi Germany went on for years without the knowledge of the Allies.