Lost in the Passage: (Japanese American) Women in Julie Otsuka’s The Buddha in the Attic
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Julie Otsuka’s latest novel, The Buddha in the Attic, is an unconventional Asian American novel in the sense that it emphasizes the break between Japanese American mothers and their daughters. Despite an attachment to their mothers, Japanese picture brides in the novel are separated from them by paternal authority and physical distance. They become mothers in America, but instead of being a source of inspiration and strength, the alienation they experience from their daughters renders them helpless. Unlike other Asian American novels that thematize mother-daughter relationship, The Buddha in the Attic removes the women from the narrative before they can have any chance to connect with their daughters. Once the collective protagonists of the novel, the Japanese picture brides, leave their neighborhoods to be interned in War Relocation Camps, the reader never gets another glimpse of them. This is a significant structural difference that distinguishes the novel from other writing on Word War II internment, as most writing, including Otsuka’s previous novel, focus on what happens to the Japanese Americans during and after the internment. This paper argues that this radical strategic difference should be read in the context of the post-9/11 era in which the novel was published. By featuring the women’s disappearance after the Pearl Harbor attack as both figurative and literal, Otsuka warns her readers against the loss of minority people and their voices during the similar national hysteria that swept America after 9/11.
Abstract
Julie Otsuka’s latest novel, The Buddha in the Attic, is an unconventional Asian American novel in the sense that it emphasizes the break between Japanese American mothers and their daughters. Despite an attachment to their mothers, Japanese picture brides in the novel are separated from them by paternal authority and physical distance. They become mothers in America, but instead of being a source of inspiration and strength, the alienation they experience from their daughters renders them helpless. Unlike other Asian American novels that thematize mother-daughter relationship, The Buddha in the Attic removes the women from the narrative before they can have any chance to connect with their daughters. Once the collective protagonists of the novel, the Japanese picture brides, leave their neighborhoods to be interned in War Relocation Camps, the reader never gets another glimpse of them. This is a significant structural difference that distinguishes the novel from other writing on Word War II internment, as most writing, including Otsuka’s previous novel, focus on what happens to the Japanese Americans during and after the internment. This paper argues that this radical strategic difference should be read in the context of the post-9/11 era in which the novel was published. By featuring the women’s disappearance after the Pearl Harbor attack as both figurative and literal, Otsuka warns her readers against the loss of minority people and their voices during the similar national hysteria that swept America after 9/11.
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