The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka

The Buddha in the Attic is a novel about Japanese picture brides who came to the United States of America in the early 20th century. This novel by Julie Otsuka is beautifully written, lyrical, and was a National Book Award finalist (2011) and a PEN/Faulkner Award winner (2012). Multiple stories told in the first person plural of many Japanese girls and women are woven together. The women are from a single boatload of “picture brides” from different walks of life who have come to California to marry Japanese men they have never met. Many find that their new husbands are nothing like the descriptions they had been given. Many find their lives to be nothing like they imagined. From domestic work to migrant labor, from blindly obeying husbands and bearing children who are ashamed of them, they struggle to make lives in a nation on the brink of war…a nation about to make them the enemy. In the last section, the perspective shifts to that of the white neighbours. “The Japanese have disappeared from our town. Their houses are boarded up and empty now”. Brilliant short story.