The
Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka Review
Written
on 10/27/2014
I
will make this short and sweet just like this wonderful little novel.
Julie Otsuka uses imagery and a verse like writing style to tell the
tale of a group of Chinese women that travel across the ocean to
America in search of a better life in the years before World War II
and attack on Pearl Harbor.
The
rhythm of her words make this book a quick read, like swimming across
smooth waters. Otsuka uses a collective voice that unities the women
in her story, but still uses individual stories to push the narrative
along. Its a very unique and beautiful style of writing that makes
her novel like a 129 page poem.
Through
the beauty of Otsuka's writing is the tragic story of these women's
lives. They left everything they had and traveled miles across the
ocean to get what they had been promised by their husbands-to-be, a
dream life. When they arrived on the west coast of the United States,
they found far less than the perfect life their husbands had wrote
home about.
They
worked endless, back-breaking hours as farm workers or housemaids.
Some had made it into a Japanese part of town and enjoyed a life not
too different from what they had left. They had children, they lost
children. Some learned to love their husband, others dreamed of
murdering him.
No
matter what kind of life they were able to build, the attack on Pearl
Harbor changed everything again. Some were left to live alone while
their husbands were arrested. Some lost jobs they had worked hard at
since there arrival. All were banished from their home, leaving
everything behind again for an unknown destination.
Otsuka
beautifully tells the tale of such a tragic time in American history
and makes each woman's story impossible to forget.
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