The Buddha in the Attic (2011) by Julie Otsuka: An Intersectional Reading

Authors : Nadia ABDELHADİ, Yasmina DJAFRI

Pages : 3-22

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Publication Date : 2022-11-01

Article Type : Research Paper

Abstract :While this article is not another lament on the murkiness of intersectionality, neither theoretically nor analytically, it is a contention that the interplay of various identity markers undeniably contributes to sketch a unique painful woman experience that deserves considerable reflection. In this respect, Julie Otsuka’s fictional work; The Buddha in the Attic insert ignore into journalissuearticles values(2011);, could be read through an intersectional lens that opens ground for the interrogation of a gendered corrupted past, a past that holds the lot of racial immigration. This article, accordingly, operates on the historiographic nuance of this fictional work, whereby Julie Otsuka’s ventures to excavate forgotten stories of former Japanese immigrant women during the Second World War. With the reliance on an unconventional narrative structure; reported from the perspective of the first plural personal pronoun ‘we’-referred to as the ‘choral narrator’- Julie Otsuka employs a narrative mode which helps individual subjectivities collide very subtly to celebrate a collective consciousness that desperately seeks recognition and identification. Throughout the narrative process, Otsuka re-imagines, extrapolates, even manipulates and selects elements of history by accentuating the painful experiences of these diasporic subjects as Japanese immigrant women struggling to find their place in America, regardless of the disillusionment that emanates from the consequences of the odd junctions of their lives, delineating the contours of oppression, discrimination and other forms of social inequality and personal malaise. Based on the postulate that Otsuka appropriates the stories of former Japanese immigrant women as she mourns their lives in America and commemorates their resistance, two main issues are at the core of this debate: how is it that Otsuka highlights the particular interplay that oscillates between gender, race, and immigration in the lives of her women ancestors? And, how would her resort to the past help her understand the present of the diasporic subjects in contemporaneity?
Keywords : Identity, Intersectionality, Japanese Women, Immigration