Journal ArticleDOI
Alien Enemies in Julie Otsuka's When the Emperor Was Divine
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This article explored a recent reimagination of Japanese internment in order to suggest a way of understanding Asian American subjects as something more than immigrants: they are enemies, defined as enemies.Abstract:
This essay explores a recent reimagination of Japanese internment in order to suggest a way of understanding Asian American subjects as something more than immigrants: they are enemies Julie Otsuka’s 2002 novel When the Emperor Was Divine subjects an unnamed, typical American family to military detention, evacuation, and forced incarceration Compelled to identify with Enemy Japan, the members of the family transform into alien, treacherous beings My reading focuses on small expressions of allegiance to Emperor Hirohito, who becomes a dangerous and tantalizing figure of desire in the novelread more
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The Right Stuff: The Kamikaze Pilot in Kerri Sakamoto's One Hundred Million Hearts and Ruth Ozeki's A Tale for the Time Being
TL;DR: Among the items of military equipment associated with the ground or naval engagements of World War II, few resonate as strongly as the airplane does for the air war (Leahy and Dechow 315).
Journal ArticleDOI
Life Writing, Cultural Memory, and Historical Mediation in Julie Otsuka's When the Emperor was Divine
TL;DR: This paper analyzed the relationship between Otsuka's When the Emperor was Divine and life writing, memory, and the present, and found that the novel's relationship with life writing and memory is similar to ours.
Journal ArticleDOI
The voice of diversity: Picture brides and masked individuality in Julie Otsuka’s The Buddha in the Attic
TL;DR: The authors examines how Otsuka's use of the first-person plural "we" narration and self-mimicry locates Japanese American femininity and agency at the historical confluence of imperialist and assimilationist dynamics, and argues that the novel's stylistics make visible not only a collective minority consciousness, but also the complex subjectivity of picture brides in a transnational space of diasporic negotiation, social masking and situational coalition.
Book ChapterDOI
Neo-Internment Narratives: Post-9/11, Cross-racial, and Intergenerational Memories
TL;DR: This paper examined the impact of the emergent present, including the post-9/11 situations, on the reconstruction and rethinking of Japanese American internment; the transnational perspective of internment history and interracial relationships; and the postmemory of the generation born after WWII.
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Book
Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable?
TL;DR: In this paper, Butler explores the media's portrayal of state violence, a process integral to the way in which the West wages modern war This portrayal has saturated our understanding of human life, and has led to the exploitation and abandonment of whole peoples, who are cast as existential threats rather than as living populations in need of protection These people are framed as already lost, to imprisonment, unemployment and starvation, and can easily be dismissed.
Book
Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America
TL;DR: In this paper, illegal aliens: A Problem of Law and History is defined as "a problem of law and history" where the goal is to "make and unmake of illegal aliens".
Journal ArticleDOI
War without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War
Gaddis Smith,John W. Dower +1 more