The Buddha in the Attic - Julie Otsuka

Written by Julie Otsuka
Read by Samantha Quan, Carrington MacDuffie
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

Publisher: Books on Tape
Release date: August 23, 2011
Duration: 03:52:55

A novel that tells the story of a group of young women brought over from Japan to San Francisco as ‘picture brides’ nearly a century ago.

In eight incantatory sections, The Buddha in the Attic traces their extraordinary lives, from their arduous journey by boat, where they exchange photographs of their husbands, imagining uncertain futures in an unknown land; to their arrival in San Francisco and their tremulous first nights as new wives; to their backbreaking work picking fruit in the fields and scrubbing the floors of white women; to their struggles to master a new language and a new culture; to their experiences in childbirth, and then as mothers, raising children who will ultimately reject their heritage and their history; to the deracinating arrival of war.

In language that has the force and the fury of poetry, Julie Otsuka has written a singularly spellbinding novel about the American dream.

“Entry into this audio is a bit bewildering as Julie Otsuka’s novel uses a first-person-plural point of view to meld the collective stories of Japanese mail-order brides at the turn of the twentieth century. Narrator Samantha Quan quickly dispels the confusion as she delivers the story with a rhythmic cadence. Each “we” introduces the listener to a new chorus of emotions and details. These create a haunting picture of relocation that encompasses adjustment struggles to new husbands and new homes and a stunning portrait of deportation to WWII internment camps. Carrington MacDuffie narrates the final section of the story. She presents additional viewpoints–this time of the whites that witness the Japanese women’s departures. MacDuffie captures their feelings of anger, guilt, and righteousness in a discordant coda.”— AudioFile