“She had married late, had become a mother late and was now aging prematurely.”
Total light in the style and in the story told. A book that enlightens the reader for the narrative delicacy of the author, and for the desire to bring out of the shadows one of the least virtuous pages of American history. Total surprise for us, who guiltily did not know the author and the book, but for which we must thank the participants of the GLOB reading group.
After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the United States decides to fight against an unlikely internal front, evacuating its citizens of Japanese and German origin to concentration camps scattered throughout the country.
From this point begins the story of our protagonist who, together with her two children (her husband had previously been arrested in the middle of the night), is forced to leave home, and get on a train that will take her to Utah, for the sole guilt of being of Japanese origin. A constant in the history of man for which the enemy becomes first of all those who are considered different, those who are easily recognizable as other. And it doesn’t matter if you’re not to blame, and it doesn’t matter if your children don’t even speak the original language of their grandparents or parents, it only matters that they are perceived as different.
Our protagonist’s actions exude dignity and pride. A spirit of sacrifice and obedience for which you are forced to atone for an unjust punishment, just to keep your children alive.
The evocative sadness of some passages can accompany the reader for many days, or at least it was for us. It shakes the human soul from within, like an olive tree during the harvest period, which in the end finds itself without its fruit, but remains a trunk of centuries-old pain. The passage (which we don’t want to anticipate) on White Dog, is perhaps one of the most cruel and delicate and loving and distressing passages that can be read.
We recommend it for any age group, to grow, reflect and get to know yourself better, and how the normality of everyday life can be called into play by a series of events that do not depend on our will.
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Julie Otsuka, Quando l’imperatore era un dio, Bollati Boringhieri, Torino, 2023
Original edition: When the Emperor was Divine, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2002