I adored When the Emperor Was Divine and was looking forward to this next book. There was a time when it seemed that all I was reading was about the plight of Japanese Americans during WWII. Another shameful part of American history. Otsuka didn't add anything new, but her writing is so eloquent that emotions and heartache were bleeding from the pages. The downfall for me was the style of telling this story. The repetitiveness didn't resonate with me and was distracting. I would absolutely read

This novella has the most lyrical prose I've read in a long, long time. It begins on a boat in the early 1900s, with dozens of young Japanese women who were being shipped to husbands in San Francisco to begin new lives. The women didn't know it yet, but they had been sold a bill of goods. They had been promised that their husbands were successful, handsome and rich, and that they would love living in America, but the truth is they would become migrant workers in California, and that the women mi...

The Buddha in the Attic What a mesmerizing reading experience this was. I don't recall reading a historical novel as emotionally intuitive and empathetic as this one in a long time.I was moved to read Buddha after watching George Takei's Ted Talk in which he describes what he and his family experienced when they were rounded up and taken to a interment camp after the Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbor.Although a work of fiction, this short novel focuses on the psychological and emotional suffer...

Otsuka's story of the Japanese picture brides of the early 20th century is an unusual novella, written from the perspective of the group "we", the multiple experiences of the women who came to America for a "better" life for themselves and, in some cases, to help families left behind. The style is evocative of, perhaps, the repetition found in Native American poems and song. Here it isn't so much repetition as the format of lists of expectations, fears and experiences. Amazing. And this also ma...

As with most short stories or novellas, this almost 'prose-poem' of a book is probably best if you can read it straight through, in this case to get the full effect of its incantatory prose. Though it's mostly told in first-person plural, it reminded me of the style of Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried, another treatment where what seems like 'just' a list of things is so much more. It does what I feel literature does better than 'knowing the facts': reminding us, showing us, that behind the...

Some of us will like the book. Some of us won't. Some of us will find the constant plural first person narrative terribly annoying, wondering if any group of people can be so cohesive and 'one' that they can always speak in unison, no matter the topic. Some of us can't wait to discuss it with our friends on Saturday. Some of us will cancel their RSVP to this week's book club because the last thing they want to do is give this book any more of their time. Some of us won't like it because the lack...

In this slim, delicate, lyrical novel Julie Otsuka unflinchingly and confidently does something that really is not supposed to work for Western readers, those bred in the culture of stark individualism and raised in a society where it's traditional to expect a bright spark of individuality shining through the grey masses. After all, it's the plight of one, the quest of one, the triumph of one that appeals to us - naturally, as individual and personal portrayals appeal to our innate sense of self...

Ebook, ……and Audiobook… Audiobook is read by Samantha Quan, and Andy Carrington MacDuffie. (excellent voices). 3 hours and 52 minutes long “The Buddha in the Attic”, a historical fiction novel, was first published in 2011… written by American author Julie Otsuka….. Its a novel about Japanese picture brides immigrating to America in the early 1900s. …..with an EXCEPTIONALLY AFFECTING writing style. While waiting anxiously to read “Swimmers” by Julie Otsuka….[being released February 22nd]….I thou...

This short 100-page read felt to me like riding in a human river and feeling magically a part of it. Otsuka enjoins the reader to flow with the voices of Japanese women from their sea passage to San Francisco as mail-order brides in the 20s to the time of internment in camps during World War 2. Though the women voice many different responses to the challenges they faced, they go through similar stages in the transformation of their hopes and dreams to the new realities of their life in America.

“Because the only way to resist, our husbands had taught us, was by not resisting.” ― Julie Otsuka, The Buddha in the AtticI read entirely too much white male fiction. I know this. It is familiar and available. Abundant even. It is everywhere. So, I'm trying to reach beyond my normal boundaries. Read more minority voices, listen to another story. Otherwise, what good is fiction?Julie Otsuka's little novella was quick. It checks in at 124 pages or so. But it sticks with you. It carries you*. It d...

It truly boggles the mind all of the attention this book has gotten. The premise is very simple: told in the first person plural, the stories of the women who were brought over from Japan before WW2, generally to miserable lives they had not anticipated, is related. There is no story in this book, however, as it is everyone's story. So we get every variation of where they had come from, every variation of sex for the first time with their husbands, childbirth, work, raising children, interacting...

I read The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka as part of my women's history month lineup. A well researched, historical fictional account, Otsuka depicts life for Japanese American immigrants to California over a span of thirty years in the early 20th century. Featuring mail order brides who came to San Francisco to meet their husbands for the first time, Otsuka gives a voice to a people whose story would otherwise be lost. The women came from all over Japan to sail on a steamship to meet their...

My father served in World War 2, Korea and Viet Nam. He never really talked too much about any of these wars. When we talked about World War 2 the only thing he said was that the American Government's treatment of Japanese Americans was one of the most shameful things we had ever done as a nation, at least in his life-time. He was sickened every time he thought of it. While he was alive, one of his good friends was another retired Colonel named Yamamoto who served with him in World War 2 and bey...

(First [re]read of 2021, and I'm still as mesmerized as the first time around. Forever a favorite.)All of us are readers. Some of us made the journey to the library, by walking, by bicycling, by bus, and others clicked a button on a screen. Several of us paid good money for the book, hoping, praying, that it wouldn't be a disappointment. Most could afford it, but some could not, and what a tragedy that would be!Some of us heard good things, others picked it up on a whim. Pretty cover ran through...

A lovely poemovella. Or novellem? How would one categorize this hybrid poem-novella? Whatever its genre, it is without a doubt eloquent and unforgettable. Within this slim volume the history of 20th century Issei and Nisei - first and second generation Japanese immigrants to the western hemisphere - is told by Japanese women, who must "blend into a room", who must "be present without appearing to exist." Otsuka gives these women fearless, tender, angry, sorrowful voices and dares you to not hear...

This book was like a muffled scream. A scream that comes from the mouths of a generation. A generation, lost in time and space, of a handful of Japanese girls, women, and children who are shipped to a distant land with a distant dream. An American Dream. They were shipped from their homeland with a photograph of their husbands and a pocketful of hope for a beautiful and fulfilling life ahead: of picket fences covering a lush neatly mowed lawn in front of their wooden A-frame houses. They really

Otsuka's The Buddha in the Attic is a beautiful collection of short stories that I will cherish and think about for a long time. I've said it before: it's often difficult to write about things that are closest to my heart, and this one is no exception.Told from the perspective of many picture brides sailing to San Francisco from their various hometowns in Japan during the early 1900s, Otsuka relates their dreams and fears in a constant stream of thought. When the brides finally arrive, each enco...

What a fabulous read!!! From the journey from Japan to San Francisco of Japanese mail-order brides to the onset of Japanese Americans sent off to internment camps during WWII, I was spellbound by Julie Otsuka's "The Buddha in the Attic." Narrated from first person plural and told from the POV of a group of women, this is a powerful story, for it allows the reader to see multiple perspectives yet still see the women as individuals. This would be a terrific selection for a book club.

A chorus of narrators – the “we” tense – is not the easiest voice to pull off. Julie Otsuka adroitly uses the tense to great effect in her latest book, The Buddha in the Attic. It’s a searing insight into an entire community of innocent and naïve Japanese women who arrived in California after World War I, with dreams of their new American life that would soon be cruelly shattered.Each of these women – whatever fate decrees for her – is also connected to the larger body of the sisterhood, women w...

A novel, without characters, with a non-fictional theme, but with a timeline, recollects the true events of a group of Japanese young women's immigration to America. They are caught up in a marriage scam of agents seeking wives for Japanese migrant workers who pose as wealthy businessmen in the initial plan, living the American dream. The book is divided into different historical sections, starting with the young girls' journey on the ship, through their disappointing discovery of the truth, and...