The Buddha in the Attic

pixouls reviewed The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka

A Collective We

4 stars

I listened to this as an audiobook, though not one I'd suggest listening to aloud in public. The book follows the journey of Japanese women from being shipped to the US, sold off to husbands who were not who they were told they were, up to a few decades later at the establishment of the first internment camps (around the 1940s). The writing never pulls any punches in telling the grim truth. The pluralistic narrative is a chorus that echos a collective memory of both things that were shared or specific to one person or another. The blurring of these narratives also tunes into how these individual voices have been historically erased, ending up in vague memories that make it harder to distinguish who is who among the "We" or "They", especially emphasized with the final parts of the book.

AliCorbin reviewed The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka

Review of 'The Buddha in the Attic' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

A novel, sort of, narrated in the first person plural, following a group of Japanese picture brides from their sea voyage, through marriage, motherhood, and labor, up to the point of the internment. The narrative flowed from woman to woman, doling out only a sentence or two before moving on to the next character. Most of the women were named, but it was impossible to pick out the threads of individual stories braided throughout the story, leaving you with the feeling of a single collective narrator. (Which, as Courtney pointed out, is much the way that the Japanese think of themselves - as a group rather than a collection of individuals.)

Then came Pearl Harbor, and the tenor changed. The style continued as before, with each sentence contradicting the one before it. But now, instead of each one detailing the experiences of a different woman, they listed the various rumors …

A novel, sort of, narrated in the first person plural, following a group of Japanese picture brides from their sea voyage, through marriage, motherhood, and labor, up to the point of the internment. The narrative flowed from woman to woman, doling out only a sentence or two before moving on to the next character. Most of the women were named, but it was impossible to pick out the threads of individual stories braided throughout the story, leaving you with the feeling of a single collective narrator. (Which, as Courtney pointed out, is much the way that the Japanese think of themselves - as a group rather than a collection of individuals.)

Then came Pearl Harbor, and the tenor changed. The style continued as before, with each sentence contradicting the one before it. But now, instead of each one detailing the experiences of a different woman, they listed the various rumors swirling about the group, scattered throughout the cities and farms of California. And soon to become a physical collective again, although far from the ocean where they started their journey.