Julie Otsuka's When the Emperor Was Divine is the last book I read in 2009. It's the story of one family's experience at an internment camp for Japanese Americans during World War II.
The writing is spare and elegant and the structure is somewhat formal. It made me think of Ikebana, the Japanese art of flower arranging, where minimalism and structure are as important the blossoms themselves.
The book has only six chapters. Each describes one event in the life of this family. The first chapter covers the housewife preparing to evacuate from her home, under orders from the U. S. government. She packs up her family's belongings, closes up the house and prepares for departure to an unknown place, for an uncertain amount of time. Another chapter describes the woman and her children on the train to the internment camp. Subsequent chapters describe the camp and their experiences, with the final chapter describing their return home to Berkeley, Calif., at the close of the war, and the return of the family's father from imprisonment in Texas.
It's a sad story of loneliness and despair, of shattered dreams and trust. Otsuka never gives her characters names, referring to them only as "the woman," and "the boy." This distances us from the characters, yet at the same time Otsuka excels at providing tiny, intimate clues about these characters' personalities and needs. Her simple approach belies a complex, multilayered story.
The internment of Japanese American citizens after the invasion of Pearl Harbor is a dark spot in U.S. history. Wikipedia has a good article about it, if you need a review.
