The Steering Committee for
Greenwich Reads Together 2013 has released the
program lineup for this year's book,
When the Emperor was Divine by Julie Otsuka. Throughout the month of April, the Greenwich community will have multiple opportunities to engage in activities centered around the book. The lineup covers a wide variety of material including a visit from author Otsuka. Additional programs feature first-hand accounts of internment, traditional Japanese music and crafts, as well as a panel discussion including renowned names from news and academia. Numerous adult, children and teen book discussions will be held across Greenwich.
Greenwich Reads Together is a community-wide reading experience that engages all of Greenwich in exploring a single book. The community is invited to join any of the programs, which are free and open to the public.
Click
here to see the complete list of programs and discussion groups.
Greenwich Reads Together 2013 is supported by Lead Sponsor Wiggin and Dana, LLP as well as Connecticut Center for the Book at Connecticut Humanities, Friends of Greenwich Library, Greenwich Library Board of Trustees, Dr. Laura and Mr. Robert Glanville, Rotary Club of Greenwich and Whole Foods Market Greenwich.
Visit
www.greenwichreadstogether.org to find book, film and music suggestions for further exploration, as well as discussion guides, links to interviews with the author and much more.
About the book and author
On a sunny day in Berkeley, California, in 1942, a woman sees a sign in a post office window, returns to her home, and matter-of-factly begins to pack her family's possessions. Like thousands of other Japanese Americans they have been reclassified, virtually overnight, as enemy aliens and are about to be uprooted from their home and sent to a dusty internment camp in the Utah desert.
In this lean and devastatingly evocative novel, Julie Otsuka tells their story from five flawlessly realized points of view and conveys the exact emotional texture of their experience: the thin-walled barracks and barbed-wire fences, the omnipresent fear and loneliness, the unheralded feats of heroism, When the Emperor was Divine is a work of enormous power that makes a shameful episode of our history as immediate as today's headlines.
Author Julie Otsuka is a recipient of the Asian American Literary Award, the American Library Association Alex Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship and, most recently, she was awarded Frances Femina Foreign Novel prize. Her book The Buddha in the Attic won the PEN/ Faulkner Award and was a finalist for the National Book Award.
About Greenwich Reads Together
Greenwich Reads Together is a community-wide reading experience which will engage all of Greenwich in exploring a single book. Several community organizations are leading this initiative including Greenwich Library, Greenwich Arts Council, Greenwich Historical Society, Greenwich Alliance for Education, Greenwich Pen Women, Greenwich Public Schools and private schools and Friends of Greenwich Library. Last spring, almost 20 community organizations and more than 3,000 Greenwich residents participated in events. Numerous adult, children and teen book discussions were held across Greenwich. Greenwich Reads Together 2013 is supported by Lead Sponsor Wiggin and Dana, LLP as well as Connecticut Center for the Book at Connecticut Humanities, Friends of Greenwich Library, Greenwich Library Board of Trustees, Dr. Laura and Mr. Robert Glanville, Rotary Club of Greenwich and Whole Foods Market Greenwich. For more information, visit
www.greenwichreadstogether.org.
At one time, Greenwich was composed of several separate communities which united in 1854 for budgetary reasons to form the Borough of Greenwich. Each community had its own personality or character based on demographics, industry and agriculture. Once they united, a rich, diverse community emerged. 
