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
Educated: A Memoir (2019)
Educated: A MemoirTara Westover Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, Tara Westover was seventeen the first time she set foot in a classroom. Her family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure the children received an...
Lab Girl (2018)
Lab Girl Hope Jahren Geobiologist Hope Jahren has spent her life studying trees, flowers, seeds, and soil. Lab Girl is her revelatory treatise on plant life—but it is also a celebration of the lifelong curiosity, humility, and passion that drive every...
The Underground Railroad (2017)
The Underground Railroad Colson Whitehead Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. Life is hell for all the slaves, but especially bad for Cora; an outcast even among her fellow Africans, she is coming into womanhood—where even greater pain awaits. When...
2016 Common Reader Essay Contest
Open to All First Year Students Discuss how you see the similarities and differences in the perception and treatment of Japanese Americans following the attack on Pearl Harbor, and of Muslim Americans following the attacks of September 11, 2001, and current events...
Julie Otsuka on Campus September 21, 2016
Julie Otsuka on Campus September 21, 2016 Author Julie Otsuka will visit campus on September 21, 2016. She will speak at 4:00pm in Mitchell Hall. Begin your intellectual journey
Otsuka’s “When the Emperor Was Divine” Selected as Common Reader
When the Emperor was Divine, a book by Julie Otsuka, has been selected as the University of Delaware’s 2016 First Year Common Reader program. Through the program, selected works are read by UD first year students before arriving on campus for the fall semester in...
When The Emperor Was Divine (2016)
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.
Just Mercy (2015)
A powerful true story about the potential for mercy to redeem us, and a clarion call to fix our broken system of justice—from one of the most brilliant and influential lawyers of our time
Just Mercy Essay Contest Announced
2015 Common Reader Essay Contest Bryan Stevenson’s book challenges us to consider what justice truly is. In your essay, detail how Stevenson’s book has helped to shape your own view of justice and what you and your UD peers can do to uphold and protect that view. Be...
Thank You For Your Service (2014)
Thank You for Your Service, written by the American journalist David Finkel, is the follow up non-fiction book to The Good Soldiers…
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.
