A Few Favorite Kings

So Stephen King is releasing two new books this year; Mr. Mercedes arrives June 3rd and Revival releases November 11th.  As one moderately dedicated readers (I say this for good reason considering the intensively of his readership), I'm excited to have my yearly reads stretched by two new King novels.  Especially after the fun of last September‘s Doctor Sleep, a book I followed immediately after my complete reading of King‘s classic, The Shining.  One day, after I manage to read all of King’s 60+ stories, I’ll be able to fully construct what appeals to me about his books just as effortlessly as his thorough readers.  Until then, there’s a jumble of thoughts clouding my head as I type this.  At least that’s what I tell myself.  Nonetheless, I delved into King at the unappreciative age of 12/13 when my aunt lent my copies of The Green Mile and Rose Madder.  So I started young--like many of his readers--but ultimately didn't hold tight to his stories until my early twenties.  Actually, it was Lisey’s Story that anchored me deep into King.

Before I go on I have to stress that this list isn't in any rank or order.  Nor can I press on the details that make up each book.  Also, some of the classics I haven't read or choose to skip because they're always mentioned in King listings.

Lisey's Story

I think Lisey’s Story is a great start because I’ve always liked King’s female protagonist over his men.  That’s kind of a general endorsement of mine, as there’s always been something special about literary women defying circumstances.  Especially those circumstances known to plague men protagonist.  Nevertheless, Lisey’s Story served much of what I love regarding King’s female protagonists.  Lisey is intelligent, resourceful, brave, and human.  And while she is nowhere near weak in the beginning of the novel, she organically blossoms into her true strength and out of that sort of wife-nizing (yes, I make up words here) shadow she held underneath her late husband Scott and his success as a troubled, bestselling writing.  With all that said, you can tell how incredibly personal this novel is to King and his relationship with his wife--especially considering it’s a love story Stephen King style.  Still, I wouldn’t doubt that she [Tabitha King] wouldn’t hesitating to chase King’s demons off in a terrifying place such as Boo’ya Moon.

Salem's Lot

I love old, old horror films.  I grew up watching scary movies with my mom, which developed my specific love of 80's slashers.  Seriously, Friday the 13th movies used to babysit me.  Anyway, while the original Night of the Living dead done untold things to my childish imagination, I would have to say that one of my favorite horror movies above even that was Horror Express.  Not too many people talk about that film, but it terrified the shit out of me as a kid.  Yet, I indulged in it every time I popped the cassette in.  Bleeding that film with films like 1977’s The Sentinel, and there’s no other way to express the creepy horror I received from reading Salem’s Lot.  It’s a combination of straight up horror, subtle horror, blood and guts, and that mystic religiously-themed (or occult-themed) psychological horror.  Then there was the vampire, Barlow, himself that King illustrated so beautifully that I was almost positive that nobody was going to make it out of that book alive.  Which I should add that I actually lost a tear when Susan and Father Callahan fell to Barlow.  Salem’s Lot had all the flavor I grew up loving about horror films.  And it is probably one of the few King books that I could say actually kind of scared me.

Cell

For some reason Stephen King’s Cell gets a lot of good and bad reviews.  Mostly bad I believe.  Something about his version of playing into zombie apocalyptic horror didn’t seem to move some readers.  I didn't care because I loved the book to pieces, mainly because it did a great job of conveying suspense and mystery.  And of course horror when you factor in "The Raggedy Man" and his plague of industrial science-twisted techno zombies.  Second to that is King’s cast of characters carrying the story.  While they were all capable and witty when it came to their survival, they glowed even more as doomed, cynical survivors.  That leads me to the most memorable character of the book... Alice.  Every once in awhile you come across a book where you’ll absolutely never forget a certain character and his or her exploits during the story.  For me, that character would be Alice.  Some may disagree, but I regard her as the true hero in Cell.  King gave her the spirit to be so.

Gerald's Game

If I ever make a comprehensive list of my favorite Stephen King books from Carrie to 60-something-plus Revival, the often underappreciated Gerald’s Game would easily land in my top three favorites.  Yes.  You heard me.  Gerald’s Game.  A book revolving around a single bedroom setting.  A narrow cast consisting of a dead body, a dog and a difficult woman handcuffed to a bed.  This was one of those early 90s books like Misery, yet it’s linked directly with Dolores Claiborne in which they both share the themes of abuse.  Nevertheless, this particular period seems to me where King sucked out many of his monsters from the past and placed them inside of his characters.  And tackling that on top of conceivable situations only heightened the intensity in those books.  Gerald’s Game was a good display of that intensity, as Jessie Burlingame, handcuffed to a bed, went to the rawest of human desperation to break out of her helpless situation.  That’s not to say that she didn’t have any motivation by a lurking presence known as "The Space Cowboy".  On so many different levels can I express how I found Gerald’s Game to be troubling, uncomfortable, and creepy.

On Writing

As much as I wanted to share how I felt about the Jockey in Duma Keys and how that book seems to bounce back to Bag of Bones, I’m not.  I made this list and will stick to my initial idea to add On Writing.  It is one of my favorite King books after all.  Besides, what better book to mention that encompasses where all the previous books listed have come from?  On Writing is part memoir part writing course--according to how you approach it.  I certainly took it from both standpoints considering I wanted to get near King’s inspirational story as well as his craft.  The book is really that intimate.  My favorite quote from the books states:

“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.  There’s no way around these two things that I'm aware of, no shortcut.”

That’s all I got for today, folks.  I just wanted to share five King books that I really enjoyed while it’s on the top of my mind.  We're less than a month away before Mr. Mercedes releases and hopefully I can swallow it and throw my thoughts together in a blog post dedicated to the book--as well as Revival later this year.  I got this good mind to re-read some of my older King books (Gerald’s Game is suddenly looking really good) and post “final thoughts” on each.  In the meantime share your top five favorite Stephen King books or your favorite King book as a whole.  I’m interested in learning what and why a certain book appeals to different King readers.

Book Shelf #1

They say a person's library of books reflect the person.  In all of my confusion and assorted beliefs, that may be true.  Nonetheless, I share with you my recent video touring one of my bookshelves.  I chose the smallest one first, a subconscious realization that it takes work to steady a camera and squat down to film.  Anyway, here is the results split in a two part video.  Enjoy!

Wilkerson's Other Suns

I’ve read some really fun and good books so far this year, but as of right now, the best belongs to The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson.  There is no way around how illuminative and influential this book is.  No way.  Listen, if you love Gloria Naylor, Toni Morrison, Ralph Ellison, Richard Wright, Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Walker, or J. California Cooper, this book is for you.  Absolutely.  I know my list of African American authors is short, so extend it however you feel.  Just drop any author in and tag them with this book.  I encourage everyone to read The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration.

The Warmth of Other Suns is non-fiction, categorized as History/United States according to Barnes & Nobles; however, it is chiefly a biography.  Without a doubt Isabel Wilkerson serves some powerful, informative details that illustrate African American life in the early 20th century U.S. South.  She continues to strengthen her book with the conflicts concerning the Jim Crow era, and on into black communities residing in the North and West through merging migrations.  Nevertheless, the true strength of the book lie in the biography of three African Americans Wilkerson staff to paint the tone and veracity of the book, via their personal firsthand accounts and experiences.  Their stories glow through Wilkerson’s years of personal interviews.  Each share a different decade of migration, and each travel to different geological and emotional destinations.  Whatever the cavalcade, their amazing stories are told through narratives so smoothly detailed and realized that I find it hard to ever forget about them and their respective journeys.

First on the list is Ida Mae Brandon Gladney, the wife of a Mississippian sharecropper.  Her story begins with her husband, George Gladney, and his romancing competitor vying for 16-year-old Ida’s hand in marriage.  Or better put, the endorsement of Ida’s mother to marry her daughter.  Eventually George marries Ida Mae, pulling her into his business of picking cotton on a white landowner named Mr. Edd's plantation.  Ida Mae isn't the best at picking cotton, but she manages alongside her husband.  That determination is clear in Ida Mae very early within her narrative; there is an unspoken toughness in her.  Nonetheless, being the wife of a sharecropper isn't easy beyond fieldwork either because what troubles her husband often troubles her.  

Considering that period, it wasn't uncommon for men like George to find themselves cheated by landowners.  Only a few African American men could follow mathematics and clean numbers in relation to their labor and its payoff.  For a black man to question or confront the landowner of his concerns is for a black man to gamble with immediate death.  The division of power and politics was that ruthless and clear.

So when one of George’s cousins find himself accused of stealing livestock owned by Mr. Edd, Ida Mae goes tense with the news that a posse of white men have gathered to hunt the cousin down.  Eventually they find him, beat him near death, and throw him in a jail cell.  According to Ida Mae, George’s cousin was never the same.  And when Mr. Edd’s livestock meander out of the woods and back to his plantation safe and sound, Ida Mae and George decide that it is time to take their family out of the South.  The incident hit to close, and it seemed only a matter of time before George is falsely accused on any white man’s whim and consequently beaten or killed.  That was just the way it was in Mississippi, so Ida Mae and George secretly embark on a train headed North and eventually to Chicago.

The second person carrying Wilkerson’s book is George Swanson Starling.  George begins his journey as an ambitious citrus picker in Florida (according to the book, this was the worse state for blacks).  Driven by his desire to excel beyond previous generations, George manages to complete high school and eventually move into college.  Teased for his ambition, George never allowed anyone to stop him.  However, what eventually halted his dreams was himself.  After two years of college, George sought his newly remarried father for more tuition money to keep pursuing his education.  With a new, blended family to support, George's father insist that he wait another year and work instead.  Unable to convince his father of the support he needed, George rebelliously married a local girl his father always disputed against.  Believing this would push his father into giving him the money to leave the state (and away from the girl) back to college, it only backfired.  Instead George’s father decided that it was best for George to work and take care of his new wife.  Without much of a choice, George went back into the citrus fields where his friends remained during his absence.  When George begins to use his education to challenge the work versus pay gradient, he attracts the unwanted attention of several white citrus field owners.  Unworried, George forwards his debates.  Eventually rumors of his potentially orchestrated demise begin to circulate through the fields.  Finally fearing the consequences of his outspokenness, George sets off to New York, leaving his new wife behind as he proceeds to change their future.  Unfortunately, George never quite seems to live freely without regrets.

Lastly, Wilkerson shares the story of Robert Joseph Pershing Foster from Monroe, Louisiana.  Robert comes from a family formed by education--which influenced and encouraged his own educational purists.  He and his siblings each make it to college, Robert in particular finding himself at Atlanta’s esteemed black college, Morehouse.  At Morehouse Robert studies to become a doctor and surgeon.  It’s here that he also meets his wife, the daughter of then Morehouse president, Rufus Early Clement.  Soon after his marriage and graduation, Robert joins the army.  While he faced plenty of prejudices as a black doctor in the U. S. army, it doesn't prepare him for the vacancy of opportunities he later face as a black doctor in his home state of Louisiana.  The medical community in the South adjudge black doctors to the poor, black, backwood populace only.  This realization builds pressure and frustration in Robert.  Always under the thought that he has much to prove to others, Robert eventually leaves Louisiana to California.  In turn, he removes himself from his Southern roots so completely that he almost chronically overlook how much he's already proved and achieved.

While the journey of the three are certainly different in both context and moral delivery, they each share something inspirational and reflective for generations ahead.  I say this beyond the complicated elements that made up southern plight and the response to civil rights.  As tantamount as those elements are, though.  Nonetheless, I found myself identifying with pieces of each of Wilkerson's storytellers' dilemmas, moral standings, and inner motivations.  Which really causes me to insist that people as a whole take part in everything that this book has to offer.  

Nevertheless, with that insistency I should also add that some strings of story and imagery come repetitiously.  Blame it on the years of interviews Wilkerson sources in the Acknowledgements, or the mountain of research she sites in the Notes.  But to be clear, this repetition is too minor to concede.

One serious thought The Warmth of Other Suns left me with concerns my personal lineage.  I'm from--and still live--in the South.  My family has always been here... as far as I know.  My grandmother was born in 1941, in the midst of blacks migrating North and West.  She grew up on a farm in Toney, Alabama, picking cotton with eight other children (she was the baby girl) born by Van and Maggie Abernathy.  While she clearly recalls her mother’s parents and where they lived, when I asked about her father’s parents she had this to say:

“White folks owned everything--ruled everything.  My daddy didn’t even know who his mamma was.”  I asked her to elaborate a little more.  She added:  “There are bad colored men and bad white men and if a white man owned a colored man, he’ll do whatever he ask.”

Needless to say, I got chills.

As for my grandfather, he passed in 1988.  He's in the above image.  Anyway, rumor has it that he was half Jewish, but nobody knows too much about his family because they weren't exactly happy with his decision be with my grandmother.  From what I can recall via one of my aunts, with the exception of one of his sisters, his family cut him off.  It is a saddening reality.  Especially when you want to know who your people are and where you come from.  

In any regard, my grandparents met while my grandmother was working “uptown” at this placed called Blue Front Café.  I should add that this was some time after she ran away from home.  So soon after birthing my aunt and mother, my grandmother convinced my grandfather to buy the house she currently resides in.  Our family has owned and lived in this home since its construction in the early 60s, right around the March on Washington, a Civil Rights movement geared toward the end of employee discrimination.  Since then, we've been here.

Free Comic Book Day

No, I don't have a comic book to give away.  If I was aware of such a day as Free Comic Book Day, I might've been prepared.  It was only recently brought to my attention, though.  So I'll do what I can and share a few old scans from back when I used to do comics for my high school newspaper.  They are messy, but enjoy them the best that you can.  (^_^)

V-Day Skit

Notice the Sailor V influence?  I really, really should go get some good bristol board and try this all over again.  Anyway, thanks for stopping by.  

A Course: Separation, Fear, Conflict

It’s been a while since I've grasped A Course in Miracles.  The truth is that I didn't re-recognize, during some emotionally distressful situations, that I had it available to me.  Nonetheless, through a few recent events, I found myself drawn back to the book.  So as of late I've committed myself to reading a page or two every morning before I get out of bed, to energize my spirit with a concisely positive approach to the day.  Not that I go into each day thinking negatively.  The Course just sets a whole different tone and succinct realization to each morning.  See, I read somewhere that what you think and believe within the first twenty minutes of your day will determine the proceeding twenty-four hours.  I kind of noticed that to be true one morning when I decided to picked up A Course in Miracles to soothe the rumbling in my mind.  Scratch that.  The fear in my mind is more precise.  I’m not a student of the Course, per se.  I don’t believe I have the capability to grasp something as spiritually illustrious.  Nonetheless, I find treasures in simply reading the book and finding that contrast between what I’m going through and what could inspire a positive flip on the situation.  The book is just insightful and penetrative should you take the time to read closely.  Much like Louise Hay’s You Can Heal Your Life, I take on A Course in Miracles to help realign myself to the changes I want to see in myself.  It's like a voice, or an invite to do better.  

So in this post I want to share two passages.  I don't read the book out of order, but somehow I came across these two at the right time.  Talk about how the Universe is in resonance…

These are passages from Chapter 2: The Separation and the Atonement.  Just to be clear, A Course in Miracles is not a religion, despite its use of Christian rhetoric or verbosity.  According to acim.org it's a "self-study spiritual thought system".  So there you have it.

III. The Altar of God

[Pages 40-41]

"You can temporize and you are capable of enormous procrastination, but you cannot depart entirely from your Creator, Who set the limits on your ability to miscreate.  An imprisoned will engenders a situation which, in the the extreme, becomes altogether intolerable.  Tolerance for pain may be high, but it is not without limit.  Eventually everyone begins to recognize, however dimly, that there must be a better way.  As this recognition becomes more firmly established, it becomes a turning-point.  This ultimately reawakens spiritual vision, simultaneously weakening the investment in physical sight.  The alternating investment in the two levels of perception is usually experienced as conflict, which can become very acute.  But the outcome is as certain as God.

"Spiritual vision literally cannot see error, and merely looks for Atonement.  All solutions the physical eye seeks dissolve.  Spiritual vision looks within and recognizes immediately that the altar has been defiled and needs to be repaired and protected.  Perfectly aware of the right defense it passes over all others, looking past error to truth.  Because of the strength of its vision, it brings the mind into this service.  This re-establishes the power of the mind and makes it increasingly unable to tolerate delay, realizing that it only adds unnecessary pain.  As a result, the mind becomes increasingly sensitive to what it would once have regarded as very minor intrusions of discomfort."

I think that those two passages can electrify you without a studied explanation.  Especially for those who struggle with trying to live their purpose/passion, while finding themselves separated from doing so by worldly demands.  I find myself truly aligned with these two passages because I have (and still am to be honest) experiencing that tolerance of pain, having to concern myself with those worldly responsibilities that don't necessarily lift my spirit.  Even as recent as last month where I turned my back on something that I knew would only cause me to go backwards in my journey.  While I didn't handle that situation as best as I could, I couldn't ignore the calling that there had to be a better way out of my current situation that didn't require me to go back into my old situation.  With that said, we have to hold on to our visions with the faith that they propel us into our truths.  In a sense, a vision is a kernel to life.  Without one... I could only imagine...

IV. Healing as Release from Fear

[Page 42]

"Only the mind can create because spirit has already been created, and the body is a learning device for the mind.  Learning devices are not lessons in themselves.  Thier purpose is merely to facilitate learning.  The worst a faulty use of a learning device can do is to fail to facilitate learning.  It has no power in itself to introduce actual learning errors.  The body, if properly understood, shares the invulnerability of the Atonement to two-edged application.  This is not because the body is a miracle, but because it is not inherently open to misinterpretation.  The body is merely part of your experience in the physical world.  Its abilities can be and frequently are overevaluated.  However, it is almost impossible to deny its existence in this world."

How often do we hear that we create our life/experiences via our thoughts--our minds?  Often enough.  With that creation of circumstances does your body go out to experience what your mind has created.  While I've always been familiar with this philosophy, and try to utilize it myself, I've never seen it described in the context of how your body does the learning that your mind creates.

VI. Fear and Conflict

[Page 49]

"Fear is always a sign of strain, arising whenever what you want conflicts with what you do.  This situation arises in two ways: First, you can choose to do conflicting things, either simultaneously or successively.  This produces conflict behavior, which is intolerable to you because the part of the mind that wants to do something else is outraged.  Second, you can behave as you think you should, but without entirely wanting to do so.  This produces consistent behavior, but entails great strain.  In both cases, the mind and the behavior are out of accord, resulting in a situation in which you are doing what you do not wholly want to do.  This arouses a sense of coercion that usually produces rage, and projection is likely to follow.  Whenever there is fear, it is because you have not made up your mind.  Your mind is therefore split, and your behavior inevitably becomes erratic.  Correcting at the behavioral level can shift the error from the first to the second type, but will not obliterate the fear."

After my morning reading, this passage struck me the most.  It beat to me like no other.  Almost like a beacon to my current concerns.  This is probably where I'm at the most right now.  Merging my way out of the dilemma illustrated in the passage.  I won't shed the details, but this passage's truth is that profound for me at this moment.

So are you familiar with A Course in Miracles?  What are your thoughts on it, or the passages?  Could you relate to any of them, finding yourself muddled in your own thoughts while searching for clarity?  Comment and share your thoughts below.

  

She's in the Dunes

Forgive me, but I am still trying to find the right words to describe Kobo Abe’s The Woman in the Dunes.  So many simple words can circle the reading experience.  Strange.  Suspenseful.  Mysterious.  Engrossing.  Weird.  Metaphoric.  Sand.  I suppose I should first express that I enjoyed the book.  I was anything but bored by it; it made good company while I sat in a hospital waiting room a couple of weeks ago.  Nevertheless, I have yet to fully form a view of the book in its entirety, because it's so multi-layered with potential expressions and thoughts.  However, I have a clue concerning what I left the book feeling--or even what I learned.  But for certain there are layers upon layers of material worth an appropriate and systematic analysis (I sound like a computer guru there).  Some may end the book believing something differently, however.  And some (truthfully like myself) may remain reeling through the psychological breakdown of a Japanese entomologist trapped in the vortex of a village surrounded by spilling dunes of sand.  Which affords him the undeserved privilege and responsibility of containing the dunes from ruining a village he doesn't even belong to.

But first let’s talk about what the book is about.  A quick summary before I try to work my thoughts out on a book that clearly needs a re-reading.  Opening the novel outside of a railroad station on an August afternoon, we meet Niki Jumpei.  As I mentioned, Niki is an entomologist.  However, it’s much more of a budding hobby.  Niki’s actual profession is that of a school teacher.  So in pursuit of his side passion, he spends a quiet vacation hunting for bugs in an unnamed area near the sea.  From the beginning we (the reader) are given facts and speculations related to his character, as a sort of set up to his impending disappearance and breakdown.  One speculation tackles his unmarried status while sharing a home with a woman.  And other speculation of the more stereotypical generalities point toward his possible homosexuality.  

After missing his bus ride home, Niki finds himself at the mercy of three old men who glide him--in a sincere manner--toward a pit in the dunes near that village.  In that pit lies a single home--or shack.  Offering him food and board for the night, the men direct Niki toward taking a rope ladder down into the pit where he will meet the woman offering his boarding.  While Niki, with the woman, is calm, if not strange, he is unprepared to spend the coming days with her and makes it clear that he is simply there for the night.  She giggles slightly in turn.  However, Niki’s situation is anything but amusing when the next day he proceeds to climb out of the pit only to find that the rope ladder is missing.  Trapped, his official role is to help the woman with maintaining the spread of sand encompassing the village.  This entails hauling swells of sand out of the pit via the three men’s dropping buckets.  Should Niki decide not to take part, the exchange of water for work will end.  It’s more or less there that he realizes he is captured.  Nonetheless, the real intrigue lie in the solitary woman residing comfortably in the pit.  And so, the psychological arguments and metaphoric unbinding begin.

The summary sounds like a fairytale because the tone of the book is like one.  Nonetheless, if I could pick up and examine one aspect that I’ve gathered from this book, it’s that sometimes we have to weather our storms and make the best out of what we are given.  That’s not to say that I wasn't enraged at Niki’s situation--just as he became.  However, as the story progressed during his eventually Niki conformed to his situation.  Or the idea that the carte blanche way of creating your life is an internal deception.

If you're read this book, what do you think?  Do we live life unaware that we are trapped, yet strongly believing that we are free?  Regarding my personal circumstances, I believe so. 

The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka

“But until then we would stay in America just a little bit longer and work for them, for without us, what would they do?  Who would pick the strawberries from their fields?  Who would get the fruit down from their trees?  Who would wash their carrots?  Who would scrub their toilets?  Who would mend their garments?… And so we folded up our kimonos and put them away in our trunks and did not take them out again for years.”

Otsuka uses the nobody narrative to encompass the voice of Japanese women who once arrived in America underneath the circumstances of a picture bride.  Whether these brides embarked to America a virgin, a farmer’s daughter, a seamstress, or a geisha, she’s in the boat's berths envisioning an ambitious future in the west.  Of course she sailed into the journey unaware of the reality surrounding her destination.  Nevertheless, she (actually many shes) left from places such as Tokyo, Yamanashi, Lake Biwa, and Manchuria with hopes for good fortune in another country.  The opportunity seemed life enhancing, as opposed to a life working a field or following a servitude path behind men.  Unfortunately for these hopeful women, the futures they tried to escape mostly occurred anyway.  This became clear the moment they walked over American soil, looking into the faces of their disappointment in the form of husbands ten years older than the initial photographs they received previous to their voyage.  Many weren't prepared for that first night when their husbands took them without aversion.  They were their wives after all.  Nor were the women prepared for the valleys and orchards of Sacramento, where their time lay spent picking fruit and potatoes under the watchful eye of white landowners who didn't share their language.  

Nevertheless, they were here.  In America.  Only later will they see that their civil conditions will allow them opportunities, even after America's betrayal toward them.  Some grew to support their husbands, fulfilling their roles as helpful wives assisting him with his aspirations.  Some grew swollen with resentment.  Some went back to Japan.  Sometimes under force.  Some moved out of the fields and into wealthy white households as the help.  And some gave up completely, seeking American opulence in the pockets of many men.

I kind of wish I read Julie Otsuka’s The Buddha in the Attic before When the Emperor was Divine.  Actually, I encourage reading it before her debut, should you decide to become swept by both books.  I suggest this for two reasons--though not necessarily… necessary.  One: The Buddha in the Attic limelights an era before the 1940s, specifically before the subject of Japanese-American internment camps that governed Otsuka's previous book.  See, some time between the mid 19th and early 20th century, Japanese men and women began immigrating to America.  While many arrived as labor in the sugar plantations of Hawaii, some arrived as picture brides to established (as well as not so) Japanese men.  Otsuka uses The Buddha in the Attic to tell the stories of these immigrating women, beginning with their voyage aboard a boat headed to their selective husbands residing in 1920s San Francisco.  

The second reason why I suggest you read The Buddha in the Attic first runs right into my first reason.  See, about a quarter away from the end the story moves into a rehashing of the subject Otsuka spent her debut illustrating.  She re-addresses the subject that constructed When the Emperor was Divine organically, though.  However, I caught a couple of anecdotes pulled from Emperor and placed in Buddha, particularly those describing the fate of unseen characters "re-effected" by the internment crisis.  Maybe I had no business reading both books back to back, but I did find myself slightly disinterested.  I say that only because the detailings, themes, discussions, and tone was so defined in Emperor that I went into Buddha for those same elements told exclusively in relation to Japanese picture brides.  Don't get me wrong because I did get and enjoy Buddha.  I just left wishing I'd read Emperor first.  It just seemed correct to have done so.  Hard to describe I suppose.  Anyway, I guess I’ll have to get into all that another time, and instead explain more of what I took from The Buddha in the Attic.

So lastly, while there’s no direct plot or narrator per se, The Buddha in the Attic unfolds the many, branching stories of Japanese picture brides through six chapters designated with subjects related to their journey.  An example, like a chapter titled “First Night“, details a bride’s dreadful first night in America with her husband.  And chapters titled “Babies” and “Children” centers around a picture bride’s birth into motherhood.  Otsuka shares their stories through poetic imagery, told in a collective that I would consider a 129-paged character portrait.  Because no one story is exactly the same, and it’s an encompassing portrait of picture brides, sometimes Otsuka would dish the various viewpoints of the brides and their life-related details through a list of short, rote-toned sentences.  Therefore, some of those branching details go unexplored beyond a simple sentence, whereas some gather a little more detail.  Some instances Otsuka provides framed narratives in the form of letters sent to their families in Japan.  Which are always eye-opening.

I really enjoyed The Buddha in the Attic.  I suppose I should considering I picked it up at 8am and finished it a little after 12pm.  Meaning I was hypnotized to it throughout a single sitting.  Maybe that’s a nod to its slim length--and maybe not.  The truth is that once I attached myself to the voice of Otsuka’s picture brides, I couldn't let go.  Chapter by chapter I had to witness the uncovering of her life.  Add it to your reading list!

More on Julie Otsuka's first book, When the Emperor was Divine.