Julie Otsuka will present the Assembly Series and Neureuther Library lecture at 3:30 p.m., Tuesday, September 15 in Graham Chapel. Otsuka’s debut novel, “When the Emperor Was Divine” is this year’s Freshman Reading Program selection.
In “When the Emperor Was Divine,” Otsuka explores themes of identity, loss, and injustice. She tells the story of a Japanese immigrant couple, and their American-born children living in California at the outbreak of World War II. This story focuses on the characters experiences following the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.
“When the Emperor Was Divine” describes the father’s arrest and imprisonment in New Mexico, his family’s long rail journey to an internment camp in the Utah desert, and the three years they were imprisoned. Otsuka writes of their thoughts, their lives, and the correspondence between the father and his family.
After the war, the family returns home where they try to regain their place in American society as well as their dignity and hope.
In real life, Otsuka’s mother, uncle, and grandparents were interred in camps, but she says that her mother spoke little about the experience. It was difficult to communicate with her grandmother, because as she aged she spoke more Japanese and less English. Few wanted to speak about what happened during the war, so extensive research was necessary for Otsuka to create the experiences of the family in the book.
Otsuka earned her B.A. in Art from Yale University in 1984 and her M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Columbia University in 1999. She currently resides in New York.