Discovery Questions
Congratulations to the 2012 Reading Project Contest winners!
Complete text of winning essays 2013(pdf)
Students were asked to write a one-page essay (plus bibliography) on one of the topics below.
Discover When the Emperor Was Divine
1.
When the Emperor Was Divine describes an American family’s experience in an internment camp in Topaz, Utah, during World War II. This facility presents the mother and children with a new kind of life, very unlike their home in Berkeley, California.
Essay topic: Write a description of some of the experiences one might have had in an internment camp during World War II.
This topic asks you to explore and summarize what you learn about living in the internment camps by viewing one or more of the sites included in the Cornell University Library Guide for When the Emperor Was Divine, posted on the Cornell Book Project web site at: Library Guide – Internment
In writing your essay, consider this quote from the novel: “It was not like any desert he had read about in books. There were no palm trees here, no oases, no caravans of camels slowly winding across the dunes” (53).
2.
In the first chapter of the novel, called “Evacuation Order No. 19,” while preparing to leave home, the mother takes several actions that indicate her sense of responsibility and values, including packing up items in the house, and ending by taking actions in relation to the family cat, macaw, chicken, and dog.
Essay topic: Describe the mother’s actions in relation to the family’s animals in the first chapter of When the Emperor Was Divine, and explain why you think she acts as she does.
In writing your essay, first consider this quote from the novel: “There were things they could take with them; bedding and linen, forks, spoons, plates, bowls, cups, clothes. These were the words she had written down on the back of the bank receipt. Pets were not allowed. That was what the sign had said (9).” Second, consider the question: what do you learn about the mother from her behavior in relation to the animals?
This essay does not require you to consult additional sources.
3.
In the chapter entitled “Train,” the girl and her family are taken from south San Francisco to Topaz, Utah. Outside the train, the girl observes people that they pass as they travel—a man “trimming hedges” (23), a man and woman “riding their bicycles across a bridge” (26), the man wearing boots and a cowboy hat who “touched the brim of his hat” when the train passed (38). Within the train, the girl notices and talks with other passengers— the soldier with “very nice eyes (27), the old man who is “missing two fingers” (28), Ted Ishimoto who wore “a handsome gold watch” (32).
Essay topic: Write an essay about two of the girl’s observations—one from outside and one from inside the train. What do you think the girl is feeling or learning in these moments?
In writing your essay, consider this thought that the girl has when all the shades are lowered: “There were the people inside the train and the people outside the train and in between them there were the shades” (28).
This essay does not require you to consult additional sources.
4.
The chapter entitled “When the Emperor Was Divine” shows the boy’s many thoughts and dreams during the years that the family is interned in the Utah desert. Consistent throughout this section of the novel, however, are the boy’s visions of his father. He “thought he saw his father everywhere” (49); he seeks the smell of his father in the “black Oxfords … with the oval depressions left behind by his father’s toes” (67); he goes over the image of his father being taken away “without his hat on…and… in his slippers” (74); he remembers how “his father had promised to show him the world” (78); he sees his father as an “outlaw… riding a big beautiful horse named White Frost” (83); and he considers that “none of the other fathers had been taken away in their slippers” (84).
Essay topic: Describing at least three of these images of the father, write an essay explaining what you think the boy’s memories and dreams of his father mean to him during his internment.
In writing your essay, consider the boy’s fear that the envelope with the “strands of his father’s hair [hidden] beneath the loose floorboard under his bed” at home is gone—“‘I should have taken it with me,’ he said to himself” (78-79).
This essay does not require you to consult additional sources.
5.
In the chapter entitled “In a Stranger’s Back Yard,” the family returns to their home in Berkeley hoping to “pick up our lives where we had left off and go on” (114). But their lives are not the same. The family’s experiences during and after the war reflect the effects of what has been called racial profiling—political practices that have affected other ethnic and racial groups at other times, in the U.S. and elsewhere.
Essay topic: Write an essay connecting the experience of the family in When the Emperor Was Divine with that of another racial or ethnic group.
This topic asks you to explore and summarize some of what you observe and learn based on your reading of the materials on racial profiling on the Cornell University Library Guide, posted on Book Project web site at:
Library Guide – Racial Profiling
In writing your essay, consider this quote from the novel: “On the street we tried to avoid our own reflections wherever we could. We turned away from shiny surfaces and storefront windows. We ignored the passing glances of strangers. What kind of ‘ese’ are you? Japanese or Chinese?”(120).
6.
In the last chapter of the novel, called “Confession,” the father seems to be describing many traitorous acts against Americans and against the U.S., as if he and other Japanese Americans are “treacherous and cunning, … ruthless [and] cruel” (143-144). Did he really do all these things?
Essay topic: Write an essay describing what Japanese Americans actually did contribute to the U.S. war effort.
This topic asks you to explore and summarize some of what you observe and learn from the photographs and information describing Japanese American soldiers in World War II, in one or more of the sites provided in the Cornell Library Guide posted on the Book Project web site at: Library Guide – World War II
In writing your essay, consider this quote from the novel: “Who am I? You know who I am. Or you think you do.” (142). Second, consider the question: how does the community to which the family returns “know” the father, the mother, and the children? How do we know our fellow Americans?
Cornell University Library
In support of the 2013 New Student Reading Project featuring the book When The Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka, the Cornell University Library has created a guide to complement the Project’s web site. This guide provides all who have read the book links to a vast amount of resources to help all expand on the many themes found in Otsuka’s book. These materials stretch across multiple disciplines, in various formats (i.e. print, video, and electronic). The guide can be found at: http://guides.library.cornell.edu/otsuka
Within the guide there is an overview of the Cornell University Library and the various services and resources it provides.