I have always been fascinated by people, places, and cultures. I’d love to be able to walk into someone’s house in New Orleans or Tokyo or Paris and watch how they cook, what they eat, and all of the mundane details of their unfamiliar lives. I also find emigrant stories fascinating. People from lands I would love to visit all desperate to come here and make new lives. Julie Otsuka’s novel Buddha in the Attic is a masterful tale of young women in San Francisco who were brought to the US as “picture brides”.

The story is written in eight parts tracing the lives of these women from the perilous trip over the ocean by ship, their assimilation to life in San Francisco, and their first night as women married to strangers. The women each raise children who come to reject their culture and language and face one of America’s sad chapters, the segregation of Japanese Americans during World War II in internment camps. America is a true melting pot and Julie Otsuka’s Buddha in the Attic provides an opportunity to discover a new flavor.

Buddha in the Attic is available in regular and large print at our Southeast Texas libraries or may be ordered from Amazon or Barnes and Noble.