robotic
11-10-2005, 02:57 PM
When the Emperor was Divine
http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0385721811.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg
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 characters—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.
- review (http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780385721813&view=rg)
one expects julie otsuka's book to be directed towards an extremely vivid perspective, but while reading you often take a double-take and realize that one could easily pass otsuka's book as simply fiction, and dimiss without having any historical connotations.
but within her subtle prose, you begin to understand the strong message she tries to protray,
His father had promised to show him the world. They'd go to Egypt, he said, and climb the Pyramids. They'd go to China and take a nice long stroll along the Great Wall. They'd see the Eiffel Tower in Paris and the Colosseum in Rome and at night, by the light of the stars, they'd glide through Venice in a black wooden gondola.
"The moon above", he sang, "is yours and mine...."
The day after the FBI had come to the house, he had found a few strands of his father's hair in the bathtub. He had put them into an envelope, and placed the envelope beneath the loose floorboard under his bed, and promised himself that as long as he did not check to make sure that the envelope was still there - no peeking, was his rule - his father would be alright.
it is not until the end that otsuka says, in "confession",
I'm the slant-eyed sniper in the trees.
I'm the saboteur in the shrubs.
I'm the stranger at the gate.
I'm the traitor in your own backyard.
I'm your houseboy.
I'm your cook.
I'm your gardener.
And I've been living here, quietly, beside you, for years, just waiting for Tojo to flash me the high sign.
So go ahead, and lock me up. Take my children. Take my wife. Freeze my assets. Seize my crops. Search for my office. Ransack my house. Cancel my insurance. Aunction off my business. Hand over my lease. Assign me a number. Inform me of my crime. Too short, too dark, too ugly, too proud. Put it down in writing - is nervous in conversation, always laughs loudly at the wrong time, never laughs at all-and I'll sign on the dotted line. Is treacherous, cunning, is ruthless, is cruel. And if they ask you someday what it was I most wanted to say, please tell them, if you would, it was this:
I am sorry.
http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0385721811.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg
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 characters—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.
- review (http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780385721813&view=rg)
one expects julie otsuka's book to be directed towards an extremely vivid perspective, but while reading you often take a double-take and realize that one could easily pass otsuka's book as simply fiction, and dimiss without having any historical connotations.
but within her subtle prose, you begin to understand the strong message she tries to protray,
His father had promised to show him the world. They'd go to Egypt, he said, and climb the Pyramids. They'd go to China and take a nice long stroll along the Great Wall. They'd see the Eiffel Tower in Paris and the Colosseum in Rome and at night, by the light of the stars, they'd glide through Venice in a black wooden gondola.
"The moon above", he sang, "is yours and mine...."
The day after the FBI had come to the house, he had found a few strands of his father's hair in the bathtub. He had put them into an envelope, and placed the envelope beneath the loose floorboard under his bed, and promised himself that as long as he did not check to make sure that the envelope was still there - no peeking, was his rule - his father would be alright.
it is not until the end that otsuka says, in "confession",
I'm the slant-eyed sniper in the trees.
I'm the saboteur in the shrubs.
I'm the stranger at the gate.
I'm the traitor in your own backyard.
I'm your houseboy.
I'm your cook.
I'm your gardener.
And I've been living here, quietly, beside you, for years, just waiting for Tojo to flash me the high sign.
So go ahead, and lock me up. Take my children. Take my wife. Freeze my assets. Seize my crops. Search for my office. Ransack my house. Cancel my insurance. Aunction off my business. Hand over my lease. Assign me a number. Inform me of my crime. Too short, too dark, too ugly, too proud. Put it down in writing - is nervous in conversation, always laughs loudly at the wrong time, never laughs at all-and I'll sign on the dotted line. Is treacherous, cunning, is ruthless, is cruel. And if they ask you someday what it was I most wanted to say, please tell them, if you would, it was this:
I am sorry.