Author: Julie Otsuka
Genre: Literary fiction
Rating: 3.5/5
Verdict: A small jewel of a book. Dont' miss it!
I had never heard about this book nor read any reviews of it until one of my friends posted the following link to our reading group:
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2013/11/30/obama-does-some-small-business-saturday-shopping/?hpt=hp_t2
We all looked through the list and this book sounded really interesting! Needless to say, I picked it up right away. Its a really short read, 125 pages in total.
Buddha in the attic is about the plight of Japanese mail-order picture brides who sail in hundreds to San Fransisco holding photographs of men who they believe are their new husbands and who they have never met, some of the brides as young as 14 years.
A photograph of Japanese picture brides,.
Photo Courtesy, CA State Parks Collection
When they arrive, they are shocked to see a crowd of men who are bald, old and don't look one bit as in the photograph. Only then the women realize all the photographs they were holding were 20 years old. These men are not bankers, teachers or silk merchants either as represented in their letters, rather they are farmers, fruit-pickers, gardeners or laundry men struggling to make a living.
The book walks us through the plight of the Japanese women through various stages in their lives with these men. Starting with chapter 2, "The first night" where they recount the harrowing experience of the physical consummation, the pain, the suffering, Julie takes us through various stages in their immigrant life divided into eight chapters, from getting jobs to having a child to establishing their own J-colonies in America before they are relocated back to Japan right after the pearl harbor attack. There are even some moments of joy well captured when they move from working on farms to being farm owners and their children going to school. Then comes the world war II, when they are forced to leave the country, abandon whatever they have built so far, with children in universities, their noodle shops, their laundries and sell them to white neighbors. The book ends with the white neighbors thinking a lot about their disappearance and not able to come to terms with it but then it slowly fades, memories erased and a whole colony of ethnic group has been forced out of the country.
All through this review, I've been mentioning the collective term "they". Yes, that is how the book talks about the women indeed. There is no single protagonist or lead character like in a tranditional story. The main character is "we", plural, instead of taking up a single family or Japanese woman.
Julie's style of writing is a worthy-mention here. A few pieces from the book:
On the boat, we often wondered: Would we like them? Would we love them? Would we recognize them from their pictures when we first saw them on the dock?
On the boat we carried our husbands' pictures in tiny oval lockets that hung on long chains from our necks. We carried them in silk purses and old tea tins and red lacquer boxes and in the thick brown envelopes from America in which they had originally been sent. We carried them in the sleeves of our kimonos, which we touched often, just to make sure they were still there.
Almost the entire book follows this style of narration making it almost close to poetry. The rhythmic prose feels like a conversation. The structure of the book is very different from the traditional story and that makes it a very interesting read! Definitely read it for the language and the breath-taking details of the lives of Japanese immigrant women!
Genre: Literary fiction
Rating: 3.5/5
Verdict: A small jewel of a book. Dont' miss it!
I had never heard about this book nor read any reviews of it until one of my friends posted the following link to our reading group:
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2013/11/30/obama-does-some-small-business-saturday-shopping/?hpt=hp_t2
We all looked through the list and this book sounded really interesting! Needless to say, I picked it up right away. Its a really short read, 125 pages in total.
Buddha in the attic is about the plight of Japanese mail-order picture brides who sail in hundreds to San Fransisco holding photographs of men who they believe are their new husbands and who they have never met, some of the brides as young as 14 years.
Photo Courtesy, CA State Parks Collection
When they arrive, they are shocked to see a crowd of men who are bald, old and don't look one bit as in the photograph. Only then the women realize all the photographs they were holding were 20 years old. These men are not bankers, teachers or silk merchants either as represented in their letters, rather they are farmers, fruit-pickers, gardeners or laundry men struggling to make a living.
The book walks us through the plight of the Japanese women through various stages in their lives with these men. Starting with chapter 2, "The first night" where they recount the harrowing experience of the physical consummation, the pain, the suffering, Julie takes us through various stages in their immigrant life divided into eight chapters, from getting jobs to having a child to establishing their own J-colonies in America before they are relocated back to Japan right after the pearl harbor attack. There are even some moments of joy well captured when they move from working on farms to being farm owners and their children going to school. Then comes the world war II, when they are forced to leave the country, abandon whatever they have built so far, with children in universities, their noodle shops, their laundries and sell them to white neighbors. The book ends with the white neighbors thinking a lot about their disappearance and not able to come to terms with it but then it slowly fades, memories erased and a whole colony of ethnic group has been forced out of the country.
All through this review, I've been mentioning the collective term "they". Yes, that is how the book talks about the women indeed. There is no single protagonist or lead character like in a tranditional story. The main character is "we", plural, instead of taking up a single family or Japanese woman.
Julie's style of writing is a worthy-mention here. A few pieces from the book:
On the boat, we often wondered: Would we like them? Would we love them? Would we recognize them from their pictures when we first saw them on the dock?
On the boat we carried our husbands' pictures in tiny oval lockets that hung on long chains from our necks. We carried them in silk purses and old tea tins and red lacquer boxes and in the thick brown envelopes from America in which they had originally been sent. We carried them in the sleeves of our kimonos, which we touched often, just to make sure they were still there.
Almost the entire book follows this style of narration making it almost close to poetry. The rhythmic prose feels like a conversation. The structure of the book is very different from the traditional story and that makes it a very interesting read! Definitely read it for the language and the breath-taking details of the lives of Japanese immigrant women!
