“With agonizing simplicity and clarity, Julie Otsuka chronicles in When the Emperor Was Divine the disintegration of a Japanese family’s life and spirit as they are relocated from their home to exist three years in internment camps during WWII. We all can learn from this sad, beautifully written book. It is a reminder and a warning to us that social injustice and isolation always lie beneath the surface of our structured lives, ready to emerge in moments of personal and national fear and uncertainty.
“In contrast, Cynthia Kadohata’s treatment of life before and during internment in Weedflower and Kira-Kira is more positive and even humorous as she tells her touching stories through a child’s eyes with hopefulness for the future.
“The St. Charles Public Library is pleased to cooperate with CUSD 303 and Elgin Community College to present these authors and their works to our community.”
— Diana Brown, St. Charles Public Library Director
“When the Emperor Was Divine is a beautiful, sad, and poetic story about a Japanese American family’s internment during World War II, and what their life became after returning to what used to be their home. District 303 is very happy to partner with the St. Charles Public Library and Elgin Community College to present this moving book to our community, and we encourage everyone to participate in this great community reading event.”
— Brian Harris, Ed.D, Assistant Superintendent for Learning and Teaching, St. Charles CUSD #303
“Julie Otsuka’s When the Emperor Was Divine seems an especially appropriate choice for 2007, given our country’s current anxiety about threats from inside and outside our borders and the reactions to those threats. I look forward to our working with both the St. Charles Public Library and CUSD 303 and see our joint endeavor as a great opportunity for all of us to examine our own beliefs and values through a powerful, compelling story.”
— Patrick Parks, Elgin Community College Professor of English and Co-Coordinator of the Writers Center.
Using historical documents and the experiences of her own family, Julie Otsuka has created a haunting, poignant story of one Japanese American family sent to an internment camp during World War II. What makes this book so unusual and credible is its narrative framework in which a family’s heartbreaking ordeal unfolds with the experiences of each of its characters. We see the mother stoically packing family belongings, a daughter experiencing a dehumanizing train trip, and a young boy’s daily activities during the family’s imprisonment in the Nevada desert. The story moves among various perspectives while the family’s main thoughts center on the missing father. Sadly resigned to its fate, the family’s nightmare continues upon the return home to Berkeley, California, several years later, as each member is shunned by friends and neighbors. Written in lovely, spare, prose, When the Emperor Was Divine is a highly discussible and readable book for all ages with its themes of banishment, freedom, nationalism, and civil liberties so relevant to today.
Find When the Emperor Was Divine in our catalog.
Julie Otsuka was born in Palo Alto, California in 1962. Her father was an aerospace engineer and her mother a lab technician. Ms. Otsuka was a good student and was accepted into Yale where she discovered her great love of sculpture and painting. Graduating in 1984, with a Bachelor’s Degree in Art, Ms. Otsuka entered the University of Indiana where she remained for a short time. Returning to New York, she later enrolled in the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture. During the next several years, she spent her days drawing and reading while supporting herself as a word processor in the evenings. She acknowledges coming under the spell of Ernest Hemingway, Rick Bass, Cormac McCarthy, and Richard Ford during those days. In 1995, Ms. Otsuka enrolled in Columbia’s Master of Fine Arts Creative Writing Program and completed her studies in 1999. When the Emperor Was Divine was written during the Columbia years and eventually published in hard copy by Knopf in 2002. It is her first novel.
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