![]() ![]() ![]() For all their differences, whether farm workers, laundrymen, gardeners or struggling entrepreneurs, they share a common outsider status. And the men’s reactions to their new wives vary as much as the women’s. Reality sets in when they meet their husbands, who are seldom the men they seemed from their letters and photographs. Voyaging across the Pacific to California, the women’s emotions range from fear to excitement, but most, even those leaving behind secret lovers, are hopeful. Rather than following an individual story, Otsuka lists experience after experience, piling name upon name. A first-person-plural chorus narrates the women’s experiences from their departure from Japan until they are removed from their homes and shipped to the camps, at which point the narration is taken over by clueless whites. Otsuka, whose first novel ( When the Emperor Was Divine, 2003) focused on one specific Japanese-American family’s plight during and after internment, takes the broad view in this novella-length consideration of Japanese mail-order brides making a life for themselves in America in the decades before World War II. ![]()
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