Detention and Deportation in the 21st Century

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Reflection Paper
Detention and Deportation in the 21st Century
The novel by Julie Otsuka, “When The Emperor Was Divine,” lays bare a history of identity crisis among individuals. The book explores the depth of identity crisis through a Japanese American family of four detained by the U.S. government during World War II. The author paints a clear picture of what history has to say concerning an identity crisis. “Stripped of their names and referred to only as “the woman,” “the girl,” “the boy,” and “the man”… (Takano). The four Japanese Americans in the novel represented the plight of a majority of the Japanese American population. The Japanese Americans were subjects of racial discrimination, while they were also considered traitors back in their country of origin. Therefore, the Japanese Americans are left with no identity and are left only to be identified based on their biological features.
Whether it is coincidental or not that Otsuka’s novel was published just a year after the September 11 attacks is a whole different question. However, the correlation between the happenings in the story and the events that followed the September 11 attacks in the U.S. is most striking. “In the months and years that followed the attacks of 9/11…” (Takano). Such was also the case during the Asian exclusion era. “The Chinese, Japanese, and other Asian immigrants were banned from entering the United States…” (Takano).
Immigration
The article highlights the process of immigration and clearly defines an immigrant as “a person who crosses a nation-state boundary and takes on the legal status of ‘alien,’ with associated regimes of identification, surveillance, rights, and constraints” (E...