Julia Otsuka's quietly disturbing novel opens with a woman reading a sign in a post office window. It is Berkeley, California, the spring of 1942. Pearl Harbor has been attacked, the war is on, and though the precise message on the sign is not revealed, its impact on the woman who reads it is immediate and profound. It is, in many ways she cannot yet foresee, a sign of things to come. She readies herself and her two young children for a journey that will take them to the high desert plains of Utah and into a world that will shatter their illusions forever. They travel by train and gradually the reader discovers that all on board are Japanese American, that the shades must be pulled down at night so as not to invite rock-throwing, and that their destination is an internment camp where they will be imprisoned for their own safety until the war is over. With stark clarity and an unflinching gaze, Otsuka explores the inner lives of her main character the mother, daughter, and son as they struggle to understand their fate and long for the father whom they have not seen since he was whisked away, in slippers and handcuffs, on the evening of Pearl Harbor.
Moving between dreams, memories, and sharply emblematic
moments, When the Emperor Was Divine reveals the dark underside
of a period in American history that, until now, has been left
largely unexplored in American fiction.
Julie Otsuka
was born and raised in California. She is a graduate of Yale
University and received her M.F.A. from Columbia. She lives in
New York City.
http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780385721813&view=rg
Writers' Workshop
with Author Julie
Otsuka
10 - 10:45
a.m.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Spring Creek Campus
Conference Center
_____
Author Presentation and
Book Signing
7 - 9:30
p.m.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Spring Creek Campus
Conference Center
_____
Author Presentation and Book
Signing
1 - 4
p.m.
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Central Park Campus
Conference Center
_____
Author Presentation and Book
Signing
7 - 9:30
p.m.
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Preston Ridge Campus
Event Center
_____
All events
are free and open to the public.
For directions to
Collin College campuses, click on
http://www.collin.edu/campuses/index.html
_____
Teacher's
Guide
Click Here
