Why was the first word of English the women were taught “water” ?ĩ. Are there particular images you found especially powerful? How did you feel reading this short chapter?Ĩ.
In the final sentence of “First Night,” Otsuka writes, “They took us swiftly, repeatedly, all throughout the night, and in the morning when we woke we were theirs.” Discuss the women’s first nights with their new husbands. Otsuka tells us that the last words spoken by the women’s mothers still ring in their ears: “You will see: women are weak, but mothers are strong.” What does this mean, and how does the novel bear this out?ħ. What are these shifts in typography meant to connote? How do they add to our knowledge of the women as individuals?Ħ. Discuss Otsuka’s use of italics in the novel. What are the women’s expectations about America? What are their fears? Why are they convinced that “it was better to marry a stranger in America than grow old with a farmer from the village”?ĥ.
What does Otsuka tell us is “the first thing did,” and what does this suggest about the trajectories of their lives?Ĥ. The novel opens with the women on the boat traveling from Japan to San Francisco. Why is the novel called The Buddha in the Attic? To what does the title refer?ģ. Why do you think the author made the choice to tell the story from this perspective?Ģ. Discuss the impact of this narrative decision on your reading experience. The Buddha in the Attic is narrated in the first person plural, i.e., told from the point of view of a group of women rather than an individual.
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