One of us was distracted by the handsome Hindu man cutting asparagus in the next furrow over while she worked an all she could think of was how much she wanted to unravel his white turban from his enormous brown head. I dream of Gupta-san nightly.
I'm about a quarter of the way through the book, and I'm wondering: can she really sustain this multiple-first-party narration for the whole book? How can you have a plot that is happening to a boatful of people at once, after they get off the boat?
I also wonder where she got these stories from. The book reads like the collected diaries of a few dozen women. Did she actually have these, or is it mostly imagined? I guess all will be revealed in the endnote, or at least by post-book Googling.
Right now I'm at the part where she describes how the tireless Japanese farm workers, who put up with abuse, barely ate or slept, and worked themselves sick for their paltry wages, were victims of violence because they were an "unstoppable economic machine" taking over American agriculture. Sounds like a familiar story.
I thought the multiple-first-party narration was an interesting technique, but made it hard to be fully invested in the story. One neat effect, though, is that remembering the book later (after the details have smudged together a bit) leaves you more with a feeling and a general sense than with your standard "oh yeah, this and this and this happened."
ReplyDeleteI liked it. I finished the book and read some reviews, which I generally agree with -- I thought the writing was great, and was impressed at how she pulled off the multiple narrators, but I didn't think the last chapter worked when the perspective switched to the Americans. I felt like that seemed much less intimate, and less real, than the preceding chapters -- anybody who sat down and thought about how people in those towns might feel would probably come up with something similar, while the detailed and sometimes surprising accounts of life in the previous chapters were definitely not something you could pull out of your imagination with a few minutes' thought. You're right, I do feel now like I understand the experience of those women much better than if the book just followed one person.
ReplyDeleteJust before the "Traitors" chapter, I wrote my post saying I was wondering how long she could keep up the multiple first-party narration. But then, of course, the experiences of all those women converged again as they were sent to the internment camps. I think the use of this style narration underscored the fact that all of these women who had such diverse experiences, lifestyles, and viewpoints all ended up being treated the same way -- as a common enemy.
Julie Otsuka has another book, When the Emperor Was Divine, which is about the internment camp experience. I might check that one out too.
Interview with Julie Otsuka.
ReplyDelete