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What Members Thought
Told from the viewpoint of many people, this described what some people and families went through when they immigrated to California and were later forcibly removed at the advent of World War 2.
This book was selected as the December 2012 read for my local book club. It's a short book and the unending stream of different perspectives is a bit disorienting. The stories range from women who are very naive to those who have been around the block a few times. The women come from a wide spectrum of society, from the rich, city girls to the poor country farmers.
While I'm not sure that I really liked the format of the tale, I did appreciate the story. The book encompasses a couple of decades ...more
While I'm not sure that I really liked the format of the tale, I did appreciate the story. The book encompasses a couple of decades ...more
The concept of the books is interesting, but definitely did not like the style. It was more of a list of things that happened to people rather than a novel about the things that happened to people. The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet gave so much more about the internment camps. There really was no character to bond with, no story about someone. It was just a jumble of everyone.
Aug 11, 2011
Bonnie
rated it
really liked it
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
historical-fiction,
2011-books
Beautiful and haunting and yet a little hollow. It’s less than 150 pages and it was still very hard to get through to the end. Not because of the subject matter but because of the slow pacing. This was a kaleidoscope of vignettes of Japanese women sent to be brides in California in the 1920s (30s?) through the interment camps of WWII. It’s told in the first person plural and there’s not any real sense of character – just collective experience. It’s lovely as a kind of literary history and it rea
...more
Nov 22, 2013
Jgrace
rated it
liked it
Shelves:
audio,
womens-history,
judithg,
historical-fiction,
20th-century,
jgrace,
play-book-tag,
read-in-2013,
ww2,
asia
The Buddha in the Attic –Otsuka
Audio performance by Samantha Quan and Carrington MacDuffie
3 stars
At first it was interesting; the use of collective narrative to tell the story of a group of Japanese mail order brides. The novelty wore off and it rapidly became tediously repetitious. The repetitious chorus was probably exaggerated in an audio format that made each repetitive sentence sound like a commercial sound bite. ‘One of us …blah,blah, blah. Some of us felt blah, blah,blah.’ I’m giving the ...more
Audio performance by Samantha Quan and Carrington MacDuffie
3 stars
At first it was interesting; the use of collective narrative to tell the story of a group of Japanese mail order brides. The novelty wore off and it rapidly became tediously repetitious. The repetitious chorus was probably exaggerated in an audio format that made each repetitive sentence sound like a commercial sound bite. ‘One of us …blah,blah, blah. Some of us felt blah, blah,blah.’ I’m giving the ...more
An interesting read. I enjoyed thinking about the variety of experiences that Japanese immigrant women had. There was no single experience, and Otsuka's authorial choice emphasized that. That being said, sometimes it got long or uninteresting because there was no real story line.
...more
Sep 06, 2011
Heather McChesney
marked it as to-read
Oct 16, 2011
Michelle Stie
marked it as to-read
Nov 04, 2011
Elle
marked it as to-read
Nov 12, 2011
Shannon
marked it as to-read
Jan 24, 2013
Gaijinmama
marked it as to-read
Jun 20, 2014
Janet Morris
marked it as to-read
Dec 04, 2014
Vesra (When She Reads)
marked it as to-read
Shelves:
e-book,
pc-100-199,
fiction,
c-brown,
b,
author-o,
pub-knopf,
tbr-2011,
book-club,
country-japan
Aug 05, 2015
Beth
marked it as to-read
Sep 09, 2016
Kelly
marked it as to-read
