Common Read Program

Welcome to this year’s Common Read Program, a campus-wide conversation about the novel When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka. Throughout the Fall 2009 semester, Armstrong Atlantic students, faculty, and staff will engage with one another and with the novel in a variety of ways, both within and outside of the classroom. Many first-year core classes will require the text; others will recommend it; all will be invited to participate in a campus-wide student essay contest that culminates in a student symposium in October. We hope to see you there!

Calendar of Events

August: Film Festival

:: Monday, Aug. 24th Noon-1 p.m. Science Center 1405 (Brown-bag lunch)
: : Tuesday, Aug. 25th 2:30-4 p.m. University Hall 157
: : Wednesday, Aug. 26th Noon—1 p.m. Science Center 1405
: : Thursday, Aug. 27th 2:30-4 p.m. University Hall 157
: : Friday, Aug. 28th 7 p.m. UH 156

September: Faculty Lunch and Learn

October: Student Symposium

November: Author Julie Otsuka visits campus

:: Wednesday, November 11- author reading and reception
: : Thursday, November 12- author visits classes

Masquers presents original adaptation of "When the Emperor Was Divine"
: : Thursday, Nov. 12—14 Jenkins Theater

About the Common Read Book Selection

When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka

“All Japanese persons, both alien and non-alien, will be evacuated from the… area by 12:00 o’clock noon [on] Tuesday, April 7, 1942. No Japanese person will be permitted to enter or leave the…area after 8:00 a.m., [on] Thursday, April 2, 1942, without obtaining special permission” (Source)

Executive Order 9066 codified paranoia into law. In February of 1942, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, ordering the internment of any American of Japanese descent. More than 120,000 Japanese-American families were given only a few days to pack their belongings, sell their homes, give their pets away, secure their valuables, leave their schools, friends, and sometimes, even, one another as they were forced to uproot their lives and relocate to desert camps lined with barbed wire.

Businesses owned by Japanese-Americans were boarded up. Those who owned homes were forced to abandon them or rent them to others for very little money. Those who were deemed to be spies—as the father in Julie Otsuka’s novel was—were separated from their families and taken to the FBI for questioning.

120,000 Americans lined up with their entire lives packed into just a few duffel bags—not knowing where they would be taken. So, too, would the family in Otsuka’s novel. Mother, daughter, and son boarded the train and watched unknown landscapes of desert and sage pass before their eyes as they watched their own home “grown smaller and smaller in the distance.” They would be transplanted from the green of Berkeley, California, to the dry, desolate, dirty desert of Utah.

When the Emperor Was Divine tells the story of one family caught in the long shadow of a part of U.S. history that some might rather forget. The novel narrates the experience of one family of Japanese-American U.S. citizens who are treated as enemies of their own country. One mother, one father, one daughter, and one son suffer the long journey of discrimination and internment. Author Julie Otsuka gives voice to their experiences—and the experiences of thousands of Americans who were detained during World War II.

Though they would return to Berkeley, mother, daughter, father and son would be forever changed. As would hundreds of thousands of other families. As would all Americans.

About Common Read Programs

Common Read Programs are a national, well-established practice. According to the National Resource Center on the First Year Experience, Common Reading Programs have four specific objectives: (1) To model successful academic behaviors; (2) To set expectations for student success; (3) To foster involvement that contributes to the process of learning both in the classroom and out of the classroom; (4) To promote meaningful learning across campus and across disciplines.

Common Read Programs encourage collaboration among faculty and students, and between academic studies and co-curricular activities. One goal of a Common Read Program is to cohere the perhaps seemingly fragmented core curriculum requirements of liberal arts institutions. Learning flourishes through active engagement- engagement that transcends the boundaries of classrooms and disciplines. Through the campus-wide conversation at Armstrong Atlantic, we will synthesize the many threads and themes that run through not only Julie Otsuka’s novel, but also through campus life as we connect as students, learners, intellectuals, citizens and members of the AASU community.

Students, faculty and staff: Please check out what resources are available for your use at The First Year Resource Center in the Gamble Hall 207 corridor.

Stay in touch with us at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

Return to Top