When the Emperor Was Divine *ePub
From the bestselling, award-winning author of The Buddha in the Attic, this commanding debut novel paints a portrait of the Japanese American incarceration camps that is both a haunting evocation of a family in wartime and a resonant lesson for our times. 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 incarceration 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. Don’t miss Julie Otsuka’s bestselling new novel, The Swimmers. Read more
Download Now
Why Must Read When the Emperor Was Divine?
When the Emperor Was Divine is meant to give the personal impact of the Japanese American interment during World War II. It’s not trying to provide the political background to President Roosevelt’s decision, or the anti-Japanese sentiment in California at the time. Rather it focuses upon one Japanese family in Berkeley that is informed of the evacuation order and has to move to a camp. Each chapter provides a different family member’s point of view on the experience from getting the notice, to riding on the train to the camp, to the routine of camp life, to their inability to adapt to life after their release. While a noble attempt I feel that the author largely failed in her purpose due to her writing style. The book starts off well, but from the time of the train ride to the camp itself, the story gets so tremendously boring. For example, on the train the daughter stares out of the window the whole trip watching the rest of America go on with their lives, and then stares at a man on the train, and then back out the window. I get the symbolism, but there is simply not enough going on for pages and pages of the girl sitting and looking to keep any interest. It gets even worse during the chapter on life in the camp. My friend told me those chapters were meant to pass along just how monotonous those events were. There had to be a better way to show this to the reader other than writing boring prose. It was so bad that half way through the book I could not wait for it to be over. Obviously different people are going to read this book in their own ways but personally I did not enjoy this book at all.
Read Now