Julie Otsuka's The Buddha in the Attic tells the story of Japanese 'picture brides' who came to America in the early twentieth century. The novel is narrated in the first-person plural, a collective 'we' that speaks for the thousands of women who made this journey. Otsuka traces their crossing, their first nights with husbands who looked nothing like their photographs, their labor in fields and domestic service, their struggle to raise children between cultures, and finally their removal to incarceration camps after Pearl Harbor. The prose is spare and incantatory, accumulating details that evoke individual lives while maintaining collective voice. The technique creates both intimacy and distance, honoring the women as a community while acknowledging that their individual stories have been lost. The Buddha in the Attic is a short but powerful novel, a work of historical recovery through literary experiment. Otsuka, whose previous novel When the Emperor Was Divine drew on her own family's internment experience, writes with precision and emotional restraint that makes the material more affecting. Essential reading for anyone interested in immigration, Japanese American history, or innovative fiction.