The Buddha in the Attic

This is another story I am torn on. I'll start with what I didn't so much like.  The story is about a lot of people, no one actually named, and so it is really broadly told. This happened to someone, that happened to another, and something to another, and yet something else to another person. No real story line to the book. It could have happened this way, it could have happened that way.

But what I liked was that here we have another book that made me think of something I don't give much thought too.  With so many races claiming they have it hard, that they are so judged, pity me, pity me - this story made me think of a friend I made when I first moved to California.  She was Japanese, she was an awesome friend. She had lived in the US for just over a year, spoke better English than most people I know, and she didn't have an accent. You'd never know she wasn't born and raised in Southern California.  She didn't claim life was hard, she was in all my honors classes, so she did well in school. She had no reason not to do well.  But had her family come to America 50 years before, it would have been a different story. 

The story tells of mail-order brides basically, who come from Japan. It tells, as I mention above, of the many different outcomes for such a girl.  It tells of how they were judged by others, how the, for lack of another way to say it, how the white people judged them.  How they were thought of as a lesser people. So yes, in the south, blacks were being judged and mistreated. But you know what, in California, they Japanese faced the same misjudgements, the same mistreatments. And to make it worse, jumping well forward in the story, they were thought to be spies for the Japanese during WWII, and they were put into, what I consider one of the most embarrassing actions in our nations history, they were put into interment camps, into work camps - thankfully we did not go as far as Hitler with his misjudging of a people, but still our actions weren't all that different.  And that is why I say I liked the book - again, because it made me think. It made me look at the person I am, of how I treat others, of where I may misjudge others. It is a book that makes me make changes to become better. So if for no other reason, that is why I liked the book.

The writing is good. The story, as plot-less as it is, flows and you continue to read. It is a really, really short read. I think it is under 150 pages.

It is a good pick up and read, and then you are OK to walk away for a bit and come back to it later book. There are sections in the book, so you could read a quick section, and come back a month later and just pick right back up, since you don't become attached to any characters.

Enjoy