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Come join our book group for a discussion of "When the Emperor Was Divine" by Julie Otsuka Loved the book? Hated the book? Couldn't finish it? Come join us anyway! Newcomers are always welcome!
Otsuka researched historical sources and her own grandparents' experiences as background for this spare yet poignant first novel about the ordeal of a Japanese family sent to an internment camp during World War II. Its perspective shifts among different family members as the story unfolds. We see the mother numbly pack up the family's middle-class belongings to leave behind in their Berkeley home. The dehumanizing train trip to the camp, and the bleak internment in the alkaline Nevada desert, as related by the young son and daughter, become mythic events. Their father, picked up for questioning immediately after Pearl Harbor and imprisoned throughout the war, returns a broken and bitter man. The family's humiliation continues beyond the war's end: after returning to their vandalized home, they are shunned for months by former friends and neighbors.
This is hybrid meeting, we will be meeting in person, but there is an option to join us virtually if you would like. Email mccref@slcolibrary.org for information.