TKO'd by The Buddha in the Attic

   There is no one main character in The Buddha in the Attic, Julie Otsuka's novel about Japanese picture brides who arrive in America during the early 1900s to marry men sight unseen. There are many characters. Scads of them. Each with a story that Otsuka melded into the first-person voice "we"  to retrace their journey, their first night as married women, their work, their children, their homes, their employers and neighbors, and eventually, their new status as traitors in the days after Pearl Harbor.
   It's a remarkable and memorable novel, and earlier in the year Otsuka won a big prize for it--- the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. Buddha was also a National Book Award Finalist in 2011.  And in typical Otsuka style, Buddha is spare yet richly descriptive, small--only 129 pages--yet potent.
   It's been about 10 years since she wrote her first novel, When the Emperor Was Divine, a book that I liken to a quick punch in the gut. Not that I've ever experienced that, but her book took me down for the count and left me breathless. Her subject--Japanese-Americans sent to internment camps in 1942--interested me and her writing, which is lean, clean and powerful, packed a wallop of emotion.
   Her writing still lifts me up, and I find beauty in its simplicity. Here are the opening lines from The Buddha in the Attic:

     On the boat we were mostly virgins. We had long black hair and flat wide feet and we were not very tall. Some of us had eaten nothing but rice gruel as young girls and had slightly bowed legs, and some of us were only fourteen years old and were still young girls ourselves. Some of us came from the city, and wore stylish city clothes, but many more of us came from the country and on the boat we wore the same old kimonos we'd been wearing for years--faded hand-me-downs from our sisters that had been patched and redyed many times.

And from the chapter "Whites":

   They gave us new names. They called us Helen and Lily. They called us Margaret. They called us Pearl. They marveled at our tiny figures and our long, shiny black hair. They praised us for our hardworking ways. That girl never stops until she gets the job done. They bragged about us to their neighbors. They bragged about us to their friends.

  Can you hear the music of her words? But what efficiency as a writer! I feel their isolation and anxiety on the ship. I am seasick with them on page five and homesick with them on page 17. These stories of young women who left Japan  from 1908 to 1920 to marry Japanese immigrants in America ultimately concludes with the theme of Otsuka's first novel--internment camps for Japanese Americans.

   

   Neighbors peered out at us through their windows. Cars honked. Strangers stared. A boy on a bicycle waved. A startled cat dove under a bed in one of our houses as looters began to break down the front door. Curtains ripped. Glass shattered. Wedding dishes smashed to the floor. And we knew it would only be a matter of time until all traces of us were gone.

   I regularly seek out books about Asian women. Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club pushed me in that direction years ago and since that time I've read many books about women from patriarchal cultures who face desperate situations and survive and sometimes flourish. Memoirs of a Geisha, Chinese Cinderella, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan are among my favorites. Even before I read it, I knew The Buddha in the Attic was a natural fit for me. 

  This small book is tiny enough to stash away in a purse or tote bag if you're travelling light for a weekend away. You can easily tuck it inside a beachbag or carry-on luggage.  I can't insist that you read it but I'd like to challenge any woman to open it up and resist its first few lines. Keep reading, and you'll be like me. Knocked down and breathless. Otsuka's got quite an upper cut.

The Push From the Book: each book we read leaves its mark and gives you a push: a new way of thinking, a new take on life, new ideas, new goals. Here's what this book did to me: 

    Simple response. I uttered many prayers of thanks for my life, my courtship, my husband. I did some digging before writing today's blog entry and listened to a bit of  a WHYY radio interview (http://www.julieotsuka.com/media/) with the author. Otsuka explained that these first meetings between the picture brides and their husbands were often a "first date for life" because divorce was not an option in Japanese culture at that time. Some of the matches were doomed from the start and the new brides endured harsh husbands, family life and working conditions. They had no options and for that I felt pangs of sorrow while reading. The women were strong and stoic and inspirational. Maybe some of that will rub off.  An inner-strength tune-up is always appreciated.

Snapping the Slump

  Ever been in a reading slump? I just pulled myself out of one, snapping a pitiful 0-for-5 streak of abandoned books that spanned about four weeks. I was the Phillies of the library world. Struggling. Sputtering. Trying to figure things out.  
    But I kept hacking away and taking my swings until one day last week the ball flew out of the park. At long last readers, I connected with a book.
   If you find yourself in a midsummer book funk, try The Snow Child, by first-time author Eowyn Ivey. I’m not sure if it was the title that drew me in on a steamy day or the frosty vibe of the grey and white cover art or the positive reviews I’ve been reading on several book websites. All of the above? Possibly.
      The novel is based on a Russian folk tale about a childless couple that builds a snow child during the winter's first snowfall. It magically comes to life but disappears each spring, only to return the following winter. Mabel and Jack, Alaskan homesteaders living near the Wolverine River in 1920, have an empty home, stale marriage and diminishing pantry. Mabel comes close to suicide in the opening pages, but not long thereafter, the couple’s own snow child arrives. The mysterious, sprightly child runs through the forests with uncanny speed and confidence and offers gifts of berries, homemade baskets and trapped game for the near-starving couple. Her visits are unpredictable but over time the blond, blue-eyed girl comes to trust the couple and becomes part of the family, at least during the winter months.
   There’s a strong fairy-tale thread that runs through this entire book, but it never overtakes the story of Mabel and Jack‘s ongoing battle with the elements, their farm, even their skittish horse. There is harsh Alaskan reality at the novel’s core that kept the story of the fanciful snow child in check. There are trees to fell, fields to plow, seeds to sow, wood to cut, chickens to feed, bread to bake. And half the time it’s cold, dark, snowy and lonely. One thing’s for sure. Alaska, 1920, is no place for the faint of heart, and Ivey gives her readers the total northern exposure experience.
   The author lives and works in Alaska and conjured up the territory so convincingly she’s being compared to Willa Cather, whose fiction has also been a dependable source for understanding the look and feel of the real American prairie. As compliments go, this one must give Ivey the goosebumps, no matter what the temperature in her backyard.

The Push From the Book: each book we read leaves its mark and gives you a push: a new way of thinking, a new take on life, new ideas, new goals. Here's what this book did to me:  It kept me reading outside the box. Novels relying too much on folklore and fairy tales usually disappoint me. Earlier this year I grabbed Tea Obreht’s The Tiger’s Wife, which Ann Patchett called “a marvel of beauty and imagination.” It didn’t strike me the same way, and I wanted to abolish anything like it for the foreseeable future. Good thing I let that notion pass. I would have missed something special had I put The Snow Child back on the shelf. And no doubt my slump would have continued.