Wednesday at 8 PM on Bibliocracy: Novelist Julie Otsuka. Lauded for her previous, breakthrough book, When the Emperor was Divine, Julie Otsuka has produced in The Buddha in the Attic a brave and honest, if also ambitious and carefully stylized narrative told collectively in the voices of a group of women history calls “picture brides,” Japanese women brought to the United States at the turn of the century for arranged marriages to Japanese men. Written in a poetically minimalist documentary style, this short novel surveys the emotional and political, the personal and the historical in a chronology of moments both small and large, and paints lightly the deep meanings of the picture brides’ experiences and ours --- of adventure, abuse, loss, triumph, even love. The Buddha in the Attic seems to this reader a wonderful tonic of empathic historical revision, of truth-telling, a necessary perspective elegantly, powerfully told. This novel is a pleasure to read. Thanks for listening. Thanks for supporting listener-sponsored anti-corporate community radio, and for buying and reading real books. Buy this one for sure! Listen live on the radio or online. This show available as a download for free for 90 days. http://www.kpfk.org
No comments:
Post a Comment