On a sunny day in Berkeley, California, in 1942, a woman sees a sign in a post office window, returns to her house, and matter-of-factly begins to pack her family’s possessions.
Like thousands of other Japanese Americans they have been reclassified, virtually overnight, as enemy aliens and are about to be uprooted from their homes and sent to a dusty internment camp in the Utah desert.
In this lean and devastatingly evocative first novel, Julie Otsuka tells the story of one Japanese American family from five flawlessly realized points 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 almost four years in captivity. When the Emperor Was Divine is a work of enormous power that makes a shameful episode of our history as immediate as today’s headlines. – www.julieotsuka.com
‘STORY OF SURVIVAL’
Article by Amy Wolf Photos by Evan Krape October 18, 2023 Author Stephanie Land discusses class division and systemic poverty at First Year Common Reader event Author Stephanie Land discusses class division and systemic poverty at First Year Common Reader...
2023 Common Reader Essay Contest Winners
Seven students were awarded prizes in the 2023 Common Reader Essay Contest, in response to Land's book. The winners are: · First place: Kaleigh Barry, a University Studies student from Wilmington, Delaware...
Maid (2021)
Stephanie Land addresses poverty, class division, the working poor and the luxury of time.
SHARING REFUGEE STORIES
Article by Amy Wolf Photo by Kathy F. Atkinson October 28, 2022 Author Ahmed M. Badr discusses life as a refugee at First Year Common Reader event For too long, the global conversation around the refugee crisis has excluded the voices of the refugees themselves. Ahmed...
2022-23 FIRST YEAR COMMON READER
The 2022-23 First Year Common Reader for new students attending the University of Delaware is “While the Earth Sleeps We Travel: Stories, Poetry, and Art from Young Refugees Around the World,” by Ahmed M. Badr Article by Meghan Biery Photos courtesy of Ahmed M....
While the Earth Sleeps We Travel (2022)
Combining Badr’s own poetry with the personal narratives and creative contributions of dozens of young refugees, While the Earth Sleeps We Travel seeks to center and amplify the often unheard perspectives of those navigating through and beyond the...
2021 Essay Contest Winners
Eight students were awarded prizes in the 2021 Common Reader Essay Contest, in response to the book Under A White Sky, by Elizabeth Kolbert.
Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future (2021)
In Under a White Sky, author Elizabeth Kolbert presents readers with what she calls the “Anthropocene irony.” After all that humans have done to destroy nature, is ingenuity now its only hope of survival? A search for answers sends her packing from Moku o’...
Tara Westover on Campus Tuesday, November 12, 2019 at 5:30pm
Tara Westover, the author of Educated, will visit the University of Delaware on Tuesday, November 12, at 5:30 pm in Mitchell Hall.
2019 Common Reader Essay Contest
Open to All First Year Students Westover has titled her book Educated, and much of her education takes place in classrooms, lectures or other university environments — but not all. What other important moments of “education” were described in the book? What friends,...
Julie Otsuka
Julie Otsuka is the author of two novels, The Buddha in the Attic, which won the PEN/Faulkner Award, France’s Prix Femina Étranger, and was a finalist for the National Book Award, and When the Emperor Was Divine, which won the Asian American Literary Award and the American Library Association Alex Award. Her work has been translated into more than twenty languages and sold over 600,000 copies. Her short story, ‘Diem Perdidi’, will be included in ‘100 Years of the Best American Short Stories’, which will be published in October 2015. A recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship and an Arts and Letters Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, she lives in New York City, where she writes every afternoon in her neighborhood café.
