The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka

This is a most unusual novel, if it can even be called a novel. Instead of telling a story through focusing on one or a few central characters, Otsuka tells her story of the hundreds of Japanese picture brides who came to America in the early 20th century through one or two short declarative sentences per character, describing the lives of the hundreds of women. She uses "we" to narrate, as if one picture bride were telling the story of all.

The book is divided into eight sections: the boat trip to America; the first night with new husbands, who were usually not at all as they had represented themselves; the interactions with new neighbors, particularly the white Americans; the births of the children; the growing up of the children, who often became ashamed by their Japanese heritage; World War II and Pearl Harbor, and the resulting American reaction to the Japanese; the removal of the California Japanese to internment camps; and (this section from a differing viewpoint) the reaction of white America to the sudden absence of the Japanese from their farms and communities.

This unusual style of storytelling brings focus to social and political issues--cultural misunderstanding; assimilation difficulties; racial bigotry; racial profiling; and the fear-induced abandonment of Constitutional rights by the government, culminating in the virtual imprisonment of thousands of people based solely on their racial heritage.

Unfortunately, this style does not lend itself at all to any emotional connection with the book. It seems to make of it more of a long essay rather than a novel.

I was much reminded of the beginning of the most excellent Vietnam war novel The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien. His first section was structured in a similar way, with short sentences detailing what young soldiers carried to war, using "they" as his point of view. But then he progressed to individual stories, bringing about emotional connections. This does not happen in The Buddha in the Attic.

This book is very short (129 pages trade paperback), which is good in this instance, as so much "list-making" becomes tiresome.

For me, the primary attraction of the novel is the applications it has to today's political climate. Even though the WWII Japanese internment has been acknowledged by several US presidents as having been a shameful mistake and the internees have been paid reparations, once more our country has imprisoned people without due process of law, again out of fear. Even those who carp endlessly about Constitutional rights seem to think this is OK. My hope is that later on this, too, will be acknowledged as a mistake.

By the way, this book won the 2012 Pen/Faulkner Award for Fiction in 2012.