Book Club: "The Buddha in the Attic" By Julie Otsuka

Tuesday, July 16, 2024 - 7:15pm


Join us on the third Tuesday of every month in the Armstrong Room for the St. Helens Public Library Book Club! (or online at https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82117410118?pwd=T1o4VnRIZVFkVFZ3VjFuS1B0cXNWQT09)

This month's book is The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka.

“Julie Otsuka's The Buddha in the Attic tells the story of a group of young women brought from Japan to San Francisco as “picture brides” nearly a century ago.

In eight incantatory sections, The Buddha in the Attic traces the picture brides’ extraordinary lives, from their arduous journey by boat, where they exchange photographs of their husbands, imagining uncertain futures in an unknown land; to their arrival in San Francisco and their tremulous first nights as new wives; to their backbreaking work picking fruit in the fields and scrubbing the floors of white women; to their struggles to master a new language and a new culture; to their experiences in childbirth, and then as mothers, raising children who will ultimately reject their heritage and their history; to the deracinating arrival of war.”

See other upcoming titles on our website.