This slim novel written by Julie Otsuka was a national bestseller, noted on several best book of the year lists and a finalist for the National Book Award. It won several awards including the PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction. Inspired by the life stories of young Japanese 'picture brides' brought to America in the 1900's, it's a heartfelt and observant record of first generation immigrants and the subsequent internment of the Japanese population during the Second World War.
Told from multiple viewpoints in the first person, using collectives such as 'We' and 'Some of us', it follows young women from diverse backgrounds, areas of Japan, and ages from innocent teens to experienced or widowed women in their thirties. Promised by matchmakers their prospective husbands were established businessmen, most are shocked when they meet men several years older than their picture, men who work as labourers or in the lowest jobs Americans would not consider doing. Some of them worked tirelessly as free labour in fields, some of them in domestic service, some of them as bar hostesses. One of us had a husband who beat her, one of us had a husband who respected her, one of us had a husband who never spoke, one of us disappeared with her lover in the night, every experience it seems is covered. Living in segregated J-towns, they gradually built businesses towards a better life, a brighter and easier future for their American born children who grew up choosing Western names and culture. During the war, the communities are at first picked apart by prejudice and fear, and then removed en masse to detention camps, abandoning businesses, homes and property.
It's a tragic event that is not well enough known. The recent Japanese film Vancouver no Asahi dealt with the same topic with Japanese Canadians, a terrific film. In 1942, Japanese American actor George Takai and his family were removed to a camp, and I've always thought there would be a great role for him in a serious, big budget movie of the events during the war. Impressively researched and poetically told, it's a deceptively simple novel that had me wondering if Otsuka's presentation of the collective experience was as involving as a more in depth individual story, but it is so unique and well told that the overall reward of the novel is memorable.
2011 / Tradeback / 129 pages
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