Julie Otsuka

Inspired by the experience of her family members in the Japanese-American internment camps during World War II, Julie made her debut in 2002 with a spare and intimate portrayal of one Berkeley family over the years that the U.S. government detained them. Told from a different point of view in each chapter, When the Emperor was Divine offers a quiet glimpse of a father, mother, daughter and son forced to assume the role of political prisoners on December 8, 1941.

"Through an accretion of small, well-chosen details, Otsuka turns a brief novel about one of the most shameful episodes in our history into something even larger: a meditation on what it means to be loyal to ones country and to ones self, and on the cost and the necessity of remaining brave and human even as the larger world grows more fearful and savage." -Francine Prose

When the Emperor was Divine was greeted with rapturous praise on publication and won several prizes including the American Library Association Alex Award and the New York Public Library Books for the Teen Age Award. The book has been selected frequently by universities and cities for One Reads and is extremely popular with informal book clubs. Julie Otsuka grew up in California, is a graduate of Yale and received her MFA from Columbia University. She has made many presentations to various groups about her novel and the history of the Japanese-American internment during World War II.

Works by this Speaker

When the Emperor Was Divine

Julie Otsuka’s commanding debut novel paints a portrait of the Japanese internment camps unlike any we have ever seen. With crystalline intensity and precision, Otsuka uses a single family to evoke the deracination—both physical and emotional—of a generation of Japanese Americans. In five chapters, each flawlessly executed from a different point of view—the mother receiving the order to evacuate; the daughter on the long train ride to the camp; the son in the desert encampment; the family’s return to their home; and the bitter release of the father after more than four years in captivity—she has created a small tour de force, a novel of unrelenting economy and suppressed emotion. Spare, intimate, arrestingly understated, When the Emperor Was Divine is a haunting evocation of a family in wartime and an unmistakably resonant lesson for our times. It heralds the arrival of a singularly gifted new novelist.


From the Hardcover edition.

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