March 2023
Julie Otsuka: The Buddha in the Attic
Discussion: March 26th, 5:30-7pm
This month we are reading Julie Otsuka's The Buddha in the Attic a highly poetic novel, nominated for the 2011 National Book Award, about the Japanese “picture brides” who journeyed to California in the early twentieth century. Written in the first-person plural in order to better convey the collective experience of this group of women, the novel ends with the forced exodus of Japanese-Americans to internment camps following the bombing of Pearl Harbor. If you are interested in reading more about this chapter of American history, have a look at Otsuka's first novel, When the Emperor Was Divine.
Here are some questions to get you started. Feel free to bring any additional questions the book raised for you...
The Buddha in the Attic is told from the point of view of a group of women rather than an individual. How did this impact your reading experience? Why do you think Otsuka chose to tell the story from this perspective?
Every so often Otsuka switches from “most of us“ or “some of us” to "one of us…" Why? What is the effect of this shift in point of view?
What do the lines in italics add to the novel?
What are the women’s expectations about America? What are their fears? Why are they convinced that "it was better to marry a stranger in America than grow old with a farmer from the village"?
What are the women’s lives like in these early months in America? How do their experiences and challenges differ from what they had been led to expect?
Otsuka writes, "We forgot about Buddha. We forgot about God. . . . I fear my soul has died. . . . And often our husbands did not even notice we’d disappeared." What does Otsuka mean by "disappeared"? What is she suggesting about their spiritual lives, their inner selves? Do the women reappear in this sense in the course of the novel? When?
Otsuka tells us that the last words spoken by the women’s mothers still ring in their ears: "You will see: women are weak, but mothers are strong." What does this mean, and how does the novel bear this out?
Otsuka writes, "They gave us new names. They called us Helen and Lily. They called us Margaret. They called us Pearl." How does this mirror the names taken by the women’s children later in the novel?
"One by one all the old words we had taught them began to disappear from their heads," Otsuka writes of the women’s children. What does it mean for these children to reject their mother’s language? What point is Otsuka making about cultural inheritance?
How do the dreams of the children differ from the dreams of their mothers?
Why do the women feel closer to their husbands than ever before in the section entitled "Traitors"?
How is the structure of the penultimate section, called "Last Day," different from the structure of all the sections that precede it? Why do you think Otsuka chose to set it apart?
Who narrates the novel’s final section,"A Disappearance"? Why? What is the impact of this dramatic shift?
Why is the novel called The Buddha in the Attic? What does the title refer to?