Synopsis: On a sunny day in Berkeley, California, in 1942, a
woman sees a sign in a post office window, returns to her home, and
matter-of-factly begins to pack her family's possessions. Like thousands of
other Japanese Americans they have been reclassified, virtually overnight, as
enemy aliens and are about to be uprooted from their home and sent to a dusty
internment camp in the Utah desert.
In this lean and devastatingly evocative first novel, Julie
Otsuka tells their story from five flawlessly realized points of view and conveys
the exact emotional texture of their experience: the thin-walled barracks and
barbed-wire fences, the omnipresent fear and loneliness, the unheralded feats
of heroism. When the Emperor Was Divine is a work of enormous power that makes
a shameful episode of our history as immediate as today's headlines.(from the back of the book)
Review: This story centers on a Japanese-American
family and starts the day the notices went up, ordering all Americans of
Japanese descent to report for Internment. Told from different points of view,
mother, father, brother, sister, each placing a portion of the story into place,
giving the reader an all-encompassing view of the emotions, the sorrow, the
endurance, the loss, which these people suffered. It’s heartbreaking. Some, like the father,
never recover. Some, like the children, have their life irrevocably altered,
leaving behind whoever they might have been and becoming someone else. And
some, like the mother, simple accept what comes, without complaint, like a rock
at the edge of the sea. Otsuka’s prose, simple and evocative, create images
that do not easily leave the mind. One can almost taste the dust of the camp,
feel the biting wind, and smell the desert. A must-read, particularly in today’s
social and political climate.
Bookmarks: 4.5 of 5
Awards: American Library Association's Alex Award,2003; Asian American Literary Award, 2003
ISBN: 978-0-385-72181-3
Year Published: 2002
Date Finished: 2-7-2017
Pages: 144
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