As I read this, a thought occurred to me: why didn't we read a single book about Japanese internment when I was in school? Up until high school, history classes alternated between state history and U.S. history; internment could have been taught in either context, but it wasn't. I mentioned in a previous review that I had two Holocaust literature units in high school, but nowhere did we discuss the atrocities that transpired only miles from our own homes.
The brief and poetic When the Emperor Was Divine would have been the perfect book for my middle school or freshman year classes. The first page, in and of itself, is exquisite. I got a chill envisioning this nameless woman walking down University Avenue, seeing an evacuation notice in the window, and going home to pack her things without knowing where exactly she was going.
The story follows the unnamed characters many places-- to the backyard of their Berkeley bungalow, a train headed east, an internment camp in the Utah desert, and memories of the past-- but only with occasional glimpses into their innermost feelings. Most of what we know of the characters is divined from their actions: the practical mother does her best to keep her conduct from betraying emotion, the young boy's thought processes are full of unspoken fear, and the girl simply runs away from the reader. We observe the most intimate, telling things about these characters, but they don't even have names. In some ways, we don't know them at all.
I did not expect the book to follow the family back home. For all I knew about internment, I had never imagined what that return must have felt like. The violated house and the coldness of the neighborhood are one thing, but the family that returns to the house is also very different from the one that left.
No comments:
Post a Comment