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Julie Otsuka's When The Emperor Was Divine

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Julie Otsuka’s When the Emperor was Divine is a story about a Japanese-American family and their experience in an internment camp in Utah. In the book, the young girl says to her mother “Is there anything wrong with my face?... People were staring” (15). The reader can see from this quote what it was like for the Japanese-Americans during the war. The quote shows how it was not just a national problem; it was a problem for everyone- including making a ten year old girl feel self-conscious. What makes this stand out from the others is that as far as the reader knows, she has not done anything wrong. She also has no clue as to why people are being discriminatory towards her, hence why she has to ask her mom. What she has yet to learn is that

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