Julie Otsuka, author of “When the Emperor Was Divine,” this year’s Freshman Reading Program selection, will present the Assembly Series/Neureuther Library Lecture at 3:30 p.m., Tuesday, Sept. 15, in Graham Chapel.
Otsuka
Otsuka’s debut novel explores themes of identity, loss and injustice. It is the story of a Japanese immigrant couple and their American-born children living in California at the outbreak of World War II. The 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 in which they were imprisoned. Otsuka writes of their thoughts, their lives and the correspondence between the father and his family.
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 a bachelor’s degree in art from Yale University in 1984 and a master of fine arts degree in creative writing from Columbia University in 1999. She resides in New York.
The talk is free and open to the public. For more information, visit assemblyseries.wustl.edu.