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jazzy_daveJulie Otsuka "The Buddha in the Attic" (Anchor)
Otsuka's beautifully written, heart-wrenching novel is written as a first-person everywoman memoir of Japanese mail-order "picture brides" brought to San Francisco in the early twentieth century to work alongside their labouring husbands. For most, it was a joyless life of hard labour and disappointment. Otsuka follows them up until World War II when their lives or the lives of their children and grandchildren were disrupted with sudden removal to internment camps for the duration of the war:
"There were six brothers from a strawberry ranch in Dominguez who left wearing cowboy boots so they wouldn't get bitten by snakes. . . . There were children who left thinking they were going camping. There were children who left thinking they were going hiking, or to the circus, or swimming for the day at the beach. There was a boy on roller skates who did not care where it was he was going as long as there were paved streets." The final chapter is written in the first person of someone who watched her Japanese neighbours herded away: "We began to receive reports of lights left on in some of the Japanese houses, and animals in distress. A listless canary glimpsed through the Fujimoto's' front window. Dying koi in a pond over at the Yamaguchi'. And everywhere the dogs. . . . Last loads of laundry still cling to the line. In one of their kitchens---Emi Saito's---a black telephone rings and rings. . . . Morning glories begin to grow wild in their gardens. . . . A lemon tree is dug up over at the Sawada's'. Locks are jimmied off of front and back doors. Cars are stripped." Otsuka has begun with stories of hardship and dashed hope and ends with quiet, emotion-charged intimate details of one of America's most shameful episodes.
A difficult and painful read.
Otsuka's beautifully written, heart-wrenching novel is written as a first-person everywoman memoir of Japanese mail-order "picture brides" brought to San Francisco in the early twentieth century to work alongside their labouring husbands. For most, it was a joyless life of hard labour and disappointment. Otsuka follows them up until World War II when their lives or the lives of their children and grandchildren were disrupted with sudden removal to internment camps for the duration of the war:
"There were six brothers from a strawberry ranch in Dominguez who left wearing cowboy boots so they wouldn't get bitten by snakes. . . . There were children who left thinking they were going camping. There were children who left thinking they were going hiking, or to the circus, or swimming for the day at the beach. There was a boy on roller skates who did not care where it was he was going as long as there were paved streets." The final chapter is written in the first person of someone who watched her Japanese neighbours herded away: "We began to receive reports of lights left on in some of the Japanese houses, and animals in distress. A listless canary glimpsed through the Fujimoto's' front window. Dying koi in a pond over at the Yamaguchi'. And everywhere the dogs. . . . Last loads of laundry still cling to the line. In one of their kitchens---Emi Saito's---a black telephone rings and rings. . . . Morning glories begin to grow wild in their gardens. . . . A lemon tree is dug up over at the Sawada's'. Locks are jimmied off of front and back doors. Cars are stripped." Otsuka has begun with stories of hardship and dashed hope and ends with quiet, emotion-charged intimate details of one of America's most shameful episodes.
A difficult and painful read.
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