Review: The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka

    What an incredible read! Julie Otsuka's The Buddha in the Attic presents the story of thousands of Japanese women who came to America in search of a better life. Many of them never found it, but through this novel and others like it, I certainly hope their stories are heard.

    This book is written in an almost eerie first person plural perspective. It begins on a boat full of the "picture brides", sometimes called "mail-order brides", exchanging photos of their husbands, looking to the future with bright eyes and excitement of what awaits them in America. The brides are Japanese women who came to America in the early 1900s to marry men whom they'd previously been matched with. They arrive in San Francisco to find that many of their husbands aren't quite as young or attractive as they thought, and many of them aren't as well-off as they were told either. We follow these women through their terrifying first nights as wives, watch them as they venture into the fields and homes where they work, and eventually see the sorrow and injustice they were faced with when they and their children are sent off to internment camps during the war.

“They learned that some people are born luckier than others and that things in this world do not always go as you plan."

    The final section is told through the eyes of the white people along the coast. It shows their odd sense of loss and regret but also reveals the ugly, underlying racism against the Japanese and any other people who weren't white.

"All we know is that the Japanese are out there somewhere, in one place or another, and we shall probably not meet them again in this world."

    The writing in this book is absolutely gorgeous. It's poetic. It's full of hard lessons and horrible moments. It's the secrets and stories and screams of thousands of women written in a way that lays everything bare before the reader- the horrific parts, the bearable times, and the seemingly sparse but beautiful ones.

    There's not a ton to write about this. I can't sit here and judge the lives of nearly 10,000 women. What I can say, though, is that The Buddha in the Attic is a fantastic and raw catalog of the experiences of these Japanese women, and I won't forget them any time soon.

Rating: 5/5