Julie Otsuka's The Buddha In The Attic

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Similar to President Trump’s current travel ban on seven Muslim-majority countries, President Theodore Roosevelt’s 1907 Gentlemen’s Agreement banned the immigration of Japanese laborers, recognizing them as a threat to the American workforce (Nakano 41). In turn, the immigration of Japanese brides increased, with around 20,000 picture brides arriving in the United States for various personal reasons between 1908 and 1920, since their entry was not prohibited by the agreement (Nakano 41). However, all of Japanese immigrants encountered American racism and discrimination. The Pearl Harbor bombing on December 7, 1941 increased this racism, making it easier to justify the internment of people of Japanese descent, authorized by Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066, tearing them away from the homes they had worked so hard to create (Nakano 42). …show more content…

Julie Otsuka, herself of Japanese descent, explores the contradiction of American values and reality in her novel The Buddha in the Attic, a story of a group of picture brides who immigrated to America expecting prosperity, instead experiencing only hardship and prejudice. Using anaphora, symbolism, and the first-person plural point of view, Otsuka emphasizes the universal hardships the Japanese picture brides faced in their attempt to achieve the American dream, reflecting how despite their efforts to become Americans, society can impede the immigrants’ pursuit of the American dream, simply because of its fear of the immigrants’ differences in culture and

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