A review by shirleytupperfreeman
The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka

Using the voice of many, Julie Otsuka tells the story of Japanese women who came to the US as mail order brides in the early 1900s. She begins, "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---." The many voices tell about the boat trip, the arrival and meeting of their husbands, the unexpected hard work and lack of luxury, babies and children, becoming new people - or not. Then comes WWII and the disappearance of the Japanese into internment camps. The last chapter of this short, lovely book is still told in the voice of many but the many, in this case, are the white people's reactions to the disappearance of their neighbors. This is a beautifully written testament to the lives of women who were nearly invisible at their time in history.