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When the
Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka Rating: ••• (Recommended) |
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Injustice Julie Otsuka’s debut novel, When the
Emperor Was Divine, takes on the range of the internment of Japanese
Americans during World War II. Otsuka captures the sadness, separation, alienation,
loneliness and injustice of the time with a poetic voice and the creation of images
that are lasting. Each of the five chapters presents a different point of
view from the same family: the mother’s response to the order to evacuate;
the daughter’s experience of the train ride to the internment camp; the son’s
impressions of life in the desert; the family’s reaction upon returning home;
and the father’s release from captivity. Otsuka’s precision and care make
reading this novel a delight. Here’s an excerpt from the boy’s life in
the desert (pp. 64-5): Always,
he would remember the dust. It was soft
and white and chalky, like talcum powder. Only the alkaline made your skin burn.
It made your nose bleed. It made your eyes sting. It took your voice away. The
dust got into your shoes. Your hair. Your pants. Your mouth. Your bed. Your
dreams. It
seeped under doors and around the edges of windows and through the cracks in
the walls. And
all day long, It seemed, his mother was always sweeping. Once in a while she
would put down the broom and look at him "What I wouldn't give," she’d
say, 'for my Electrolux.” One evening, before he went to
bed, he wrote his name in the dust across the top of the table. All through the
night, while he slept, more dust blew through the walls. By morning his name was gone. His fathers used to call him
Little Guy. He called him Gum Drop, and Peanut, and Plum. "You're my absolute
numero uno,' he would say to him, and whenever the boy had woken up screaming
from dark scary dreams his father had come Into his room and sat down on the
edge of his bed and smoothed down the boy's short black hair. "Hush. Puppy."
he whispered. "it's all right. Here I am.” At dusk
the sky turned blood red and his sister took him out walking along the outer
edge of the barracks to watch the sun go down over the mountains. "Look.
Look away. Look. Look away." That, she told him, was the proper way to
look at the sun. If you stared at it straight on for too long, you'd go
blind. In the
darkening red twilight they would point out to each other the things that
they saw: a dog chasing a porcupine, a tiny pink seashell, the husk of a beetle,
a column of fire ants marching across the sand. If they were lucky they might
see the Portuguese lady strolling along the fence with her husband, Sakamoto,
or the lady with the white turban—she'd lost all her hair, they'd heard overnight
on the train—or the man with the withered arm who lived In Block 7. If they
were very lucky, the man with the
withered arm might even raise it – the arm – and wave to them. Otsuka captures the emotions of family
relationships and the sadness and suffering of wartime injustice in When the
Emperor Was Divine. Steve Hopkins, January 1, 2003 |
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ã 2003 Hopkins and Company, LLC The
recommendation rating for this book appeared in the February 2003
issue of Executive
Times For
Reprint Permission, Contact: Hopkins
& Company, LLC • 723 North Kenilworth Avenue • Oak Park, IL 60302 E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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