Otsuka uses the novel’s structure to highlight the function of the narrators, the Japanese picture brides, as Other in both the historical context and more specifically in the novel, The Buddha in the Attic. The Other, a term used often in Feminist theory and critical analysis is essentially “a person or group of people who are perceived to be different in some fundamental way from oneself and the group one perceives one belongs to” (“Other”). That is, the Other is a group of people that are demonized and are less than the those that do the othering, the subject. The immigrant experience, specifically the Japanese immigrant experience before and during WWII, is an example of this term. In the novel, the narrators are set apart from the white
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She is able to portray an experience that extends to an entire group of people while making it possible for individual voices to come through. The narrators in this novel are Japanese women that have left their family and sailed to America to have families and better lives. The collective plural portrays an experience that was felt many people in a way that a single narrator could not. Otsuka uses “we” throughout the novel or some variation like “one of us” or “some of us.” The novel begins with the line “on the boat we were mostly virgins” (3). The first sentence of the first chapter introduces the reader to the feelings and thoughts of an unnumbered group of women who are doing what they can to survive and be …show more content…
The reader gets rare opportunity to differentiate between the narrators until near the end of the novel. The chapter “Last Day” includes the individual names of many of the women: “Asayo---our prettiest---left the New Ranch in Red Wood carrying the same rattan case…Yakuso left her apartment in Long Beach with a letter from a man that was not her husband” (107). Otsuka diverges off of the narrator path to give a more direct voice to the women right before they are silenced with the lack of voice in the last chapter. Where before the narrators were singled out by saying “some of us” or “one of us,” names are given to the women. They are not the American names that their employers gave them, but their Japanese
She is able to portray an experience that extends to an entire group of people while making it possible for individual voices to come through. The narrators in this novel are Japanese women that have left their family and sailed to America to have families and better lives. The collective plural portrays an experience that was felt many people in a way that a single narrator could not. Otsuka uses “we” throughout the novel or some variation like “one of us” or “some of us.” The novel begins with the line “on the boat we were mostly virgins” (3). The first sentence of the first chapter introduces the reader to the feelings and thoughts of an unnumbered group of women who are doing what they can to survive and be …show more content…
The reader gets rare opportunity to differentiate between the narrators until near the end of the novel. The chapter “Last Day” includes the individual names of many of the women: “Asayo---our prettiest---left the New Ranch in Red Wood carrying the same rattan case…Yakuso left her apartment in Long Beach with a letter from a man that was not her husband” (107). Otsuka diverges off of the narrator path to give a more direct voice to the women right before they are silenced with the lack of voice in the last chapter. Where before the narrators were singled out by saying “some of us” or “one of us,” names are given to the women. They are not the American names that their employers gave them, but their Japanese