{"id":5387,"date":"2021-08-30T01:42:43","date_gmt":"2021-08-30T01:42:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/?p=5387"},"modified":"2021-08-30T17:40:51","modified_gmt":"2021-08-30T17:40:51","slug":"creative-contest-book-talk-on-diem-perdidi-by-julie-otsuka","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/creative-contest-book-talk-on-diem-perdidi-by-julie-otsuka\/","title":{"rendered":"Creative Contest: Book Talk on &#8220;Diem Perdidi\u201d by Julie Otsuka"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"An Excerpt from Diem Perdidi by Julie Otsuka\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/mcp9-ms71Zs?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The short story &#8220;Diem Perdidi&#8221; by Julie Otsuka is about a woman with dementia. The story is written in the second person as the woman&#8217;s daughter narrates her mother&#8217;s memory loss.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The narrator&#8217;s mother is still herself and yet not herself. She can remember how to play Claire de Lune on the piano; she remembers the narrator&#8217;s star sign. She remembers each of her children&#8217;s births and that her husband brings her on daily outings.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">But she is more than a mother; the story details the woman&#8217;s grief from lost love and the death of her first daughter. She forgets how to behave and sometimes cannot remember the narrator&#8217;s name.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Though the narrator is careful not to insert herself, readers can feel her desperation as her mother&#8217;s personality and self wanes and waxes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">In <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Best_American_Short_Stories_2012\">The Best American Short Stories 2012<\/a>, Otsuka gives more context for the story and her choice to write it. She based the story on her real mother&#8217;s dementia. Otsuka is no stranger to writing about her family. Her novel <a href=\"https:\/\/bit.ly\/3ujj0g1\">When the Emperor Was Divine<\/a> was inspired by her family&#8217;s experience in Japanese internment camps. &#8220;Diem Perdidi,&#8221; however, is even more personal. Otsuka said she was hesitant to write about it at first, but eventually, the project made her feel euphoric:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">&#8220;Writing it, I suppose, was my way of keeping my mother with me in the world, a way of being with her even as she was slipping away,&#8221; she wrote.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">This story will resonate with anyone who&#8217;s watched his or her loved one age. It depicts a slow march toward loss and examines what memories we cling to and what we lose. Though the narrator&#8217;s mother becomes more and more limited in her capacity to remember, she never loses her love and feelings. What she does remember constitutes a full and vibrant life.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>View the full video on <a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/8K4nPkBj5UE\">YouTube<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>As a future school librarian, I&#8217;ve had to become well acquainted with the art of the book talk. A <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pearltrees.com\/s\/file\/preview\/245047692\/Bring%20The%20Book%20Talk%20HEAT%20from%20Brad%20Gustafson.pdf?pearlId=369105693\">book talk<\/a> is a video where the presenter attempts to sell viewers on a book. It has to give readers a hook, a synopsis, and a why-you-should-read line.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve never created a book talk for a short story before and I was nervous I&#8217;d give away too much plot with this video.<\/p>\n<p>This video was created using a variety of software. The animation you see above was originally created using <a href=\"https:\/\/wideo.co\/\">Wideo<\/a>. All of the images are either licensed under their platform or creative commons. I wanted the quote part of the video to be simple and cartoony but also a little sad, as though the items listed are fading away. Wideo does not allow users without a subscription to upload multiple audio clips. It also doesn&#8217;t allow users to download their videos or upload them to Youtube. I discovered this after spending a couple of hours already crafting the animation portion of this video. I used three separate Wideo videos to make the animated portion and recorded the narration through Audacity before uploading it. I had to make sure the graphics aligned with the narration.<\/p>\n<p>I then used <a href=\"https:\/\/screencast-o-matic.com\/lp\/screen-recording-video-editing\/?utm_source=google&amp;utm_medium=cpc&amp;utm_campaign=brand&amp;utm_term=screencast%20o%20matic&amp;gclid=CjwKCAjw3_KIBhA2EiwAaAAlik4Uz999JmFdKJ61pXClP_v3VwTqwnPmPE1Ep_azkQS5-wYVfjHGORoCpRkQAvD_BwE\">Screencast O&#8217;Matic<\/a> to record the three parts of the animation video. I edited out extraneous pauses and set up time in between clips.<\/p>\n<p>The rest of the video, which is linked above, was easy to shoot and record. I wrote up a script and used my computer&#8217;s camera to record it.<\/p>\n<p>I then used the editing software <a href=\"https:\/\/clipchamp.com\/en\/video-editor\/\">Clipchamp<\/a> to merge the two videos together.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The short story &#8220;Diem Perdidi&#8221; by Julie Otsuka is about a woman with dementia. The story is written in the second person as the woman&#8217;s daughter narrates her mother&#8217;s memory &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/creative-contest-book-talk-on-diem-perdidi-by-julie-otsuka\/\" class=\"\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1531,"featured_media":5425,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[58],"class_list":["post-5387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-summer-tales","tag-short-stories"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Creative Contest: Book Talk on &quot;Diem Perdidi\u201d by Julie Otsuka - Books We Read<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/creative-contest-book-talk-on-diem-perdidi-by-julie-otsuka\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Creative Contest: Book Talk on &quot;Diem Perdidi\u201d by Julie Otsuka - Books We Read\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The short story &#8220;Diem Perdidi&#8221; by Julie Otsuka is about a woman with dementia. The story is written in the second person as the woman&#8217;s daughter narrates her mother&#8217;s memory &hellip; Read More\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/creative-contest-book-talk-on-diem-perdidi-by-julie-otsuka\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Books We Read\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2021-08-30T01:42:43+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2021-08-30T17:40:51+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/248\/2021\/08\/mq2.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"320\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"180\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Harmony Birch\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Harmony Birch\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/creative-contest-book-talk-on-diem-perdidi-by-julie-otsuka\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/creative-contest-book-talk-on-diem-perdidi-by-julie-otsuka\/\",\"name\":\"Creative Contest: Book Talk on \\\"Diem Perdidi\u201d by Julie Otsuka - 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