Review: The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka

I loved this book about the Japanese picture brides who came to this country early in the 20th century hoping for a better life.  It reminded me of a haiku in that there are just enough words and no more; it touches the reader's emotions without telling the reader what or how to feel; it presents things as they are--allowing the light and the dark to inhabit the same space; it captures a moment in time, but in that moment there is everything. 

I loved Otsuka's use of the collective first person narrator.  It was like a Greek chorus only more because the particular story was woven into the big picture story.  The effect of this is that you feel like you've just watched a Ken Burns PBS special on the Japanese picture brides--you have a grasp of the historical details of the period, but you also have faces and individual stories that make the historical event come to life.  Like Burns, Otsuka addresses our intellect, but she changes our hearts. 

I looked up the significance of the laughing Buddha and found this: 

"The Buddha does not laugh at himself or at others, he does not laugh because he has acquired something others don’t have. The laughter is neither cynical, sarcastic, bitter nor defiant. It is the laughter of compassion, an amusement at the interplay of knowledge and ignorance that makes up the joys and sorrows of what we call life."

The Buddha is in the attic, but perhaps the Buddha is also on page 115 with a thick stick of pink chalk in her hand, skipping away, laughing, without looking back.  I like this about Julie Otsuka.  She believes there is hope for us yet.