Julie otsuka short story

Julie otsuka the buddha in the attic interview
Julie otsuka writing style
Julie otsuka interview

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Julie Otsuka

Julie Otsuka was born and raised in California. After studying art as an undergraduate at Yale University she pursued a career as a painter for several years before turning to fiction writing at age 30. She received her MFA from Columbia. She is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Asian American Literary Award, and the American Library Association Alex Award.

Her first novel, When the Emperor Was Divine, is about the internment of a Japanese-American family during World War II. It was a New York Times Notable Book, a San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year, and a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers finalist. The book is based on Otsuka’s own family history: her grandfather was arrested by the FBI as a suspected spy for Japan the day after Pearl Harbor was bombed, and her mother, uncle and grandmother spent three years in an internment camp in Topaz, Utah. When the Emperor Was Divine has been translated into six languages and sold more than 250,000 copies. The New York Times called it “a resonant and beautifully nuanced achieveme

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When the Emperor was Divine by Julie Otsuka

Julie Otsuka (b. 1962)

Julie Otsuka was born in Palo Alto, California, in 1962 to parents of Japanese descent. Her father, an Issei or Japanese immigrant, was an aerospace engineer. Her mother, a Nisei or second-generation Japanese American, was a laboratory technician before Julie's birth.

Otsuka excelled in school, and eventually moved east for college. In 1984 she earned her Bachelor of Arts degree at Yale University. Through her early 20s she studied to be a painter, but decided instead, after suffering a self-described “creative breakdown,” to turn her attention to another art form: writing.

In New York City the seeds of a highly successful career were planted when she enrolled in a writing workshop. Otsuka earned her MFA in writing from Columbia University in 1999. Part of her MFA thesis became the first two chapters of her novel When the Emperor Was Divine, published in 2002.

Julie Otsuka's mother and grandmother (Courtesy of the Otsuka family)

Otsuka's family history figures prominently in th

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Julie Otsuka

American author (born 1962)

Julie Otsuka (born May 15, 1962) is a Japanese painter and writer. She is known for drawing from her personal life to write autoethnographical historical novels about the life of Japanese Americans. In 2002 she published her first novel, When the Emperor was Divine, which is about the Japanese-American internment camps that took place in 1942-45 during World War II. The story begins in California, where she was born and raised, and it is based on Otsuka's grandfather who was arrested as a suspected spy for Japan the day after Pearl Harbor. Her novel, in 2003, received an award from the Asian American Literary Award and American Library Association Alex Award. Otsuka continued to write about her family's history and in 2011 published her second novel, The Buddha in the Attic, that takes place in the early 1900s, and it discusses the marriages of Japanese women who immigrated to the United States to marry men they knew only through photographs. These women are known as "picture brides" for this reason. During this year,