The Buddha lured by a photo

Buddha in the Attic sadly recounts the way Japanese women were tricked into leading better lives in America during the early 1900s through being ‘picture brides’ and the troubles they faced acclimatising to this foreign country.

Young woman were encouraged by their families and social peer pressure to marry ‘rich good-looking’ American men. Little did they know, they were the victims of a sad scam. They wrote to their betrothed and recieved photos of the men, albeit taken probably 15 years prior. Men wanted young women, but American women wouldn’t have them. Japanese women wanted a better life than the one they knew in the Promised Land in Post World War I society.

American author, Julie Otsuka narrates through the voice of all Japanese women. ‘We’ is the group term used at the beginning of every sentence to incorporate the hardship that every tricked and deceived woman went through. Long unfurling linked paragraphs detail the woman’s woes and disappointment. While the ‘we’ appears to hold the characters at a formal distance, that reticence infuses their stories with powerful emotion. Yet each situation is still voiced through the plural as even though not every woman may have had the exact same experience from beatings to rape to the silent treatment, every single Japanese hopeful felt the pain of each woman’s mistake.

As the string of vignettes proceeded, the questions they asked, the observations they made, the illusions they cherished created a bond with the reader. With their sometimes uncomfortably familiar hopes and fears, Otsuka’s characters emerged as particular individuals even as their concerns took us far beyond the particulars of the Japanese-American experience. In these nameless people, we confronted our own uncertainties about where we truly belong, where our loyalties lie, where we should place our trust.

Highlighting a perhaps under representing story Ostuka brings to light the shear sadness of the situation, full of hope women diminished to worse lives that they previously led and would have grown up into at home.

Otsuka’s second novel, after her widely acclaimed When the Emperor was Devine, The Buddha in the Attic is, in a sense, a prelude to Otsuka’s previous book, revealing the often rough acclimatization of a generation of farm labourers and maids, laundry workers and shop clerks whose husbands would take them for granted and whose children would be ashamed of their stilted English and foreign habits.

Shea shame of their culture were the only factors keeping them from returning home to their loving families and ‘better’ life. Religion keeps the women sane and is their hope and saviour along with one another in their imprisoned lives. Women were required to keep their Buddhist religion at bay, and when forced to leave, one woman leaves a tiny laughing Buddha high up in the corner of the attic, hence the title.

The questioning of the ‘strange’ American culture provides entertainment that will always prevail between cultures, especially east and west from wearing shoes in the house to what they see in the moon. Otsuka uses evocative descriptions of the land, the women and the families that draws in the heart of the reader

Soon, once women had given birth to their hybrid children, who were second generation American citizens. On becoming teenagers their heritage was lost on them. Thinking of their mothers as old fashioned and embarrassing, they broke the women perhaps more so then the men raping and beating them had initially done.

Meeting half way and becoming more American themselves, the Japanese women’s efforts are shattered after World War II breaks out. The women are second class citizens and families are forced to leave their homes, jobs and friends. The plural ‘we’ at the end of the novel sadly shifts to the Americans, ‘the Japanese have left us’. 

A book that no review or film can do justice to, but simply must be read.

Before any pre-concieved assumptions arise, this review is actually after re-reading it. I initially found this book in a hostel in Christchurch NZ. I read it, and fell in love with it. I insisted on re-reading it before seeing the film earlier this year. This book re-connected me with reading and with literature.

In my first year of university on my English Literature course, during our first seminar we were asked to tell the class our favourite book and why. I chose this. My tutor had never heard of it and belittled me. I now hope Kate Hex has read it and enjoyed it.

Life of Pi is a fantasy tale about Piscine Patel (named after his uncles favourite French swimming pool), the son of a zoo keeper, who becomes a zoologist and is a Christian, a Hindu and a Muslim. He retrospectively recites the story of his life as a young child in India who emigrates to Canada with his family where the cargo ship sank during the crossing. ‘Pi’ was the only survivor of his family. Divided into three logical and chronological sections, Pi re-tells his story as if you are the only one listening.

Whilst still in India in the mid 1970s, Piscine bravely re-names himself after the constant embarrassment his name brings him in class. He is now known as Pi, an abbreviation of his name and the mathematical endless irrational number of 3.17 recurring. His father, a practising and faithful Hindu, encourages the boys to interact with the animals catalysing a fascination with Richard Parker, a 450 pound Bengali tiger.

16 year old Pi survived 227 days alone at sea. Finding a lone lifeboat, Pi unwillingly becomes accompanied by a struggling zebra, a female orang-utan floating on a large bunch of bananas, a squawking hyena and a Royal Bengal tiger. Becoming boat-mates, Pi must fend for himself after several die and leave him fending for his life at one end of the lifeboat.

Martel dexterously prepares us for the seafaring section in the first part of the book. Pi’s life in India, growing up as a zookeeper’s son and becoming part of several religions is the core of the first section.  His life and what his father teaches him about animal behaviour - flight distances, aggression, social hierarchy is later translated to Pi's survival tactics on the lifeboat. Like a lion tamer in the circus ring, Pi must convince the tiger that he is the super-alpha male, using toots on his whistle as a whip and the sea as a source of treats, marking the boundary of his territory on the boat with urine and fierce and quaking stares.

Part two is Pi’s narrative of his shipwrecked life. It closely mirrors his life in India as if it had all been planned out by one of the many Gods he prays to. At times, parts of the novel are strongly questionable, even as a reader, yet still magical and brilliant. Other parts are logically set out like the long list of items found in the survival kit that must all be logged, emphasising the boredom and continual need to occupy one’s mind when lost at sea. The never ending search for shade, continual fishing and repairing of the raft and trying to not be eaten are the day’s sole activities. Pi’ story becomes like a manual, God forbid, a warning to the reader if they may ever find themselves in a similar situation as Pi calls in, on trial.

Martel’s language is mesmerising. His words are delicate, but still have solid meaning. Lyrical sentences visualise the ocean, the animals’ feelings, Pi’s feelings and his breaking soul. Passages are so vivid, that the reader feels the ocean salt on their skin, the same way Pi does, and sees the sickness in the eyes of Richard Parker the same way Pi does. Martel writes with such convincing immediacy, seasoning his narrative with zoological verisimilitude and survival tips. Yan’s language stays light even in defeat. He incorporates slight comedy lightly into Pi’s story, ‘the fact I was a swimmer made no waves’. Even in Pi’s shear desperation clinging onto his life, Martel still allows him humour all rooting back to his unfortunate name.

Yan Martel a French mother tongue speaking Canadian, feels writing in English gives him the distance he needs to write the way he does. His philosophy degree is obviously present in his writing and ideals throughout the novel. He spent over a year living in India, immersing himself in Indian life through spending time at mosques, temples, churches and zoos – all key elements of Pi’s life. He spent a further two years reading religious texts and castaway stories which rings true in his understanding of each subject.

Life of Pi is Martel’s fourth book, and before his Man Booker prize success, he failed to reach high success with his first novel Seven Stories and later with The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios and Self in the 1993 and 1996. Reviewers were puzzled by his work and faintly dared to praise his words. Initially inspired to write a book about sharing a lifeboat with a large cat after reading a review of the novella Max and the Cats by Brazilian author Moacyr Scliar, his success was born.

Part three sees Pi being interviewed by Japanese officials after being found upon the shores of Mexico, shortly after his feared saviour, Richard Parker bounds off into the jungle without a mere growl or sentimental look back. Pi retells his story with the animals and his endurance. The officials listen but ask for the truth; he tells the story but each animal he encountered is replaced by a family member or crew member of the ship that sunk.

So which story is true? Is it just a hallucination of Pi’s, or did it really happen. The sad part is that the Japanese officials can’t see beyond the end of their noses. For official reports to work, they must write the report with the story without the animals – the one that ‘makes more sense, but is not the better story’.

The novel serves both as an allegory for truth and fiction and as an edge of the seat adventure. Faith and science meet in this fantastically imagined and exotically told story of a brave Indian boy and a sea-sick tiger lost at sea.