A review by findyourgoldenhour
The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka
4.0
I finished this slim book in one sitting. I'm not sure what to say here. On the one hand, I don't like the rarely used first-person plural narrative. It feels like I'm reading about these intense experiences from 10,000 feet. I like to be on the ground and in the mind of a novel's characters. For me, a book hinges on whether or not there was at least one character I can relate to or at least root for. There isn't a single character in this book! Yes, people are named but you don't get to know or remember any of them by name.
But. Despite all of this, I felt such empathy and sadness at their collective experience. I wanted better for them, and for our country to be better. This book causes the reader to reflect on the experience of the Immigrant in America, how people come here in desperate need of a better life, how they work the jobs white Americans don't want and are mistreated as The Other. This book was written in 2011, but it felt all too relevant as a reader in 2017: the nationalist fervor, the violence and distrust against foreigners, the U.S. government's response. There is much to think about and discuss here.
I also started thinking about how many WWII novels there are, and new ones are being written all the time. These books almost always take place in Europe, using the horrors of the Nazis and the Holocaust as the drivers of the story. There are hardly any novels written about the experience of the Japanese in America during that time, however. Could it be because Americans like to read novels about evil things that have happened in history when we are the good guys who come to the rescue? It's a lot less comfortable to read about evil when we were the perpetrators, or at the very least, the silent majority who did not stand up for what was right. I suspect novels about slavery are far less popular in the Southern states than in the rest of the country. Obviously this book gave me a lot to think about and process, which is why I'm giving it four stars!
But. Despite all of this, I felt such empathy and sadness at their collective experience. I wanted better for them, and for our country to be better. This book causes the reader to reflect on the experience of the Immigrant in America, how people come here in desperate need of a better life, how they work the jobs white Americans don't want and are mistreated as The Other. This book was written in 2011, but it felt all too relevant as a reader in 2017: the nationalist fervor, the violence and distrust against foreigners, the U.S. government's response. There is much to think about and discuss here.
I also started thinking about how many WWII novels there are, and new ones are being written all the time. These books almost always take place in Europe, using the horrors of the Nazis and the Holocaust as the drivers of the story. There are hardly any novels written about the experience of the Japanese in America during that time, however. Could it be because Americans like to read novels about evil things that have happened in history when we are the good guys who come to the rescue? It's a lot less comfortable to read about evil when we were the perpetrators, or at the very least, the silent majority who did not stand up for what was right. I suspect novels about slavery are far less popular in the Southern states than in the rest of the country. Obviously this book gave me a lot to think about and process, which is why I'm giving it four stars!