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A review by slowreaderpeter
When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka
challenging
informative
sad
medium-paced
3.75
This is a bit difficult to review. Technically, it is written quite well. Very proficient. But stylistically it feels almost clinical, surgical.
We follow a family of three - a mother, her daughter, and her son - in the early 1940s when Japanese-Americans were interned in camps under the Alien Enemies Act. The husband/father was taken some weeks prior to them, and placed in numerous camps elsewhere in the country. The three we follow remain nameless the entire story, leaving them as a sort of stand-in for the Japanese-American experience, representing the diaspora as a whole.
As the months, and then years go by, we see the family slowly start to fray. We see the mother slip into depression, the daughter ages into adolescence, and the son ponders their father and the last way he remembers him. Then we finally see them able to return home, only to fear their neighbors, feeling the need to keep their heads down and not draw attention to themselves as they attempt to further Americanize themselves and shed their Japanese heritage.
In many ways it is a sad and disparaging story, but the clinical nature it is presented in gives an almost dispassionate energy to the story. To me, this made the whole thing feel lacking or less impactful than I might have liked. At the same time, we feel the sadness and depression and detachment of the events without being distracted by a romanticized story. My rating might change at a later time depending on how I think over this in the coming days.
We follow a family of three - a mother, her daughter, and her son - in the early 1940s when Japanese-Americans were interned in camps under the Alien Enemies Act. The husband/father was taken some weeks prior to them, and placed in numerous camps elsewhere in the country. The three we follow remain nameless the entire story, leaving them as a sort of stand-in for the Japanese-American experience, representing the diaspora as a whole.
As the months, and then years go by, we see the family slowly start to fray. We see the mother slip into depression, the daughter ages into adolescence, and the son ponders their father and the last way he remembers him. Then we finally see them able to return home, only to fear their neighbors, feeling the need to keep their heads down and not draw attention to themselves as they attempt to further Americanize themselves and shed their Japanese heritage.
In many ways it is a sad and disparaging story, but the clinical nature it is presented in gives an almost dispassionate energy to the story. To me, this made the whole thing feel lacking or less impactful than I might have liked. At the same time, we feel the sadness and depression and detachment of the events without being distracted by a romanticized story. My rating might change at a later time depending on how I think over this in the coming days.