Julie Otsuka

The Buddha in the Attic Julie Otsuka

From the author of the contemporary classic When the Emperor Was Divine, a tour de force about a group of women brought from Japan to San Francisco in the early 1900s as mail-order brides. In six unforgettable, incantatory sections, the novel traces their new lives as “picture brides”: the arduous voyage by boat, where the girls trade photos of their husbands and imagine uncertain futures in an unknown land. . . their arrival in San Francisco and the tremulous first nights with their new husbands. . . backbreaking toil as migrant workers in the fields and in the homes of white women. . . the struggle to learn a new language and culture. . . giving birth and raising children who come to reject their heritage. . . and, finally, the arrival of war, and the agonizing prospect of their internment. Once again Julie Otsuka has written a spellbinding novel about identity and loyalty, and what it means to be an American in uncertain times.