Buddha In The Attic By Julie Otsuka

Julie Otsuka's The Buddha in the Attic is at heart a novella about the establishment and destruction of an immigrant identity in America. Upon arrival, the Japanese immigrants must create a new identity for themselves to integrate with the American population or be branded as outsiders. However, even the most willing to assimilate can never truly leave the outsider status behind as they will always be considered as 'other'. When fear begins to accumulate, this outsider status will leave the blame on the Japanese people's shoulders. Particularly, in the chapter "Traitors," Otsuka highlights the ever-present anonymity and otherness of the Japanese immigrants that leads to the erasure of their collective American identity.
This novella is the

Throughout the novella, they try to blend in and merge with the insiders. After all, in "Traitors," this is why they described themselves as "simple women who lived quietly" and that their "husbands would be safe" as a result (81). In other words, their husbands would not get taken if they did not stand out from the typical American. By becoming insiders, they can protect themselves. Unfortunately, this insider status vanishes pretty quickly, despite all their best efforts. These efforts to stop "clinging to our strange, foreign ways" (87) included "burning our things" like "our white silk wedding kimonos" or "letters from our sisters" (86). These personal effects are what distinguish the Japanese from the Americans and yet the destruction of them confirms that they are the 'other.' An insider would not have to so desperately prove that they are in. They would not have to worry that they "had left something out" of their husband's bag that would "serve as incontestable proof" of their insider status, should their husband end up on trial (83). An American in this position would not need to worry about what to do because they are secure in their insider status. By being so eager to fit in with the Americans, the Japanese immigrants reveal how much outsiders they really are. No matter how much they Americanize themselves, the Japanese cannot avoid the public's suspicions of a Japanese "burning oil fields" or "walking into a crowded marketplace with a stick of dynamite" after "the Pacific zero hour struck" (86). Avoiding this paranoia is impossible because of the Japanese's anonymity and outsider status. The anonymity gives Americans the ability to not make their accusations not personal since Japanese as a whole are the enemy, not the ones they know specifically. The outsider status gives them cause for the accusations because the Japanese are not Americans and therefore they are dangerous. They cannot