Ep 721 - The Buddha in the Attic, by Julie Otsuka

Summary

Overdue Podcast Episode 721 Summary

The Buddha in the Attic, by Julie Otsuka

Released: September 22, 2025
Hosts: Andrew and Craig

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Brief Overview

In this episode, hosts Andrew and Craig discuss Julie Otsuka’s novel The Buddha in the Attic (2011), a critically acclaimed work that follows the collective experiences of Japanese picture brides who immigrated to the United States in the early 20th century. The novel uses a distinctive first-person plural “we” perspective to illuminate the community’s hopes, hardships, and eventual displacement during World War II. The episode explores Otsuka’s experimental style, the historical and personal context for the book, and the continued relevance of its themes today.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Julie Otsuka: Author and Context

• Biography: Born 1962, Palo Alto, CA; studied visual art at Yale, later switched to writing at Columbia.
• Family Influence & Historical Setting: Otsuka’s family was directly affected by the WWII Japanese American incarceration. Her first novel, When the Emperor Was Divine, draws from this history.
  • “It's the beginning of... fiction rooted in her family's... experiences as Japanese Americans, particularly... around World War II.” — Craig [09:01]
• Research & Intent: Otsuka bases her work on communal history, not individual biography, and draws from a breadth of anecdotes and sources.

2. Novel’s Focus and Structure

• The Picture Brides: The book follows Japanese women sent as “picture brides” to America—marrying men they knew only from photos and letters.
  • “This book ... is based on the concept of picture brides... matching brides and grooms using only photographs, specifically out of Japan.” — Craig [14:35]
• Collective Experience: The narrative unfolds through a chorus of voices (“we”), blending individual memories into a shared history.
• Linear Progression: The book is divided into chapters that each cover a phase or theme of immigrant life—from arrival to forced removal.

3. Literary Style – The “We” Perspective

• Innovative Voice: The first-person plural allows for a polyphonic account, resisting the reduction of complex group experiences to a single protagonist.
  • “Through the use of this kind of, like, individual collective perspective... they’re always speaking for a plural, like we or our, but occasionally... it will... drill down to an anecdote that’s so specific that it could only have happened to one person.” — Andrew [24:05]
• Use of Repetition: The book often repeats sentence structures (“home was…”/“we gave birth...”) to highlight both unity and diversity of experience.
• Effect on Reader: This style is both evocative and stylistically bold, providing breadth while still evoking the pain, hope, and humanity of the individuals within the collective.
  • “[It’s] the camera panning across... a group of people, but giving each face... a second in the frame.” — Craig [25:58]

4. Chapter Progression & Thematic Arcs

• Come, Japanese: Ocean voyage, hope, anticipation.
• First Night: Harsh awakening; many find husbands are not who they were portrayed to be, experiences of sexual violation and lost illusions.
• Whites: Daily life, labor, and racism (“good old-fashioned racism” as they sarcastically discuss).
  • “Just that good racism where people were just like racist and they weren’t trying to be like, I’m not racist. I just really strongly believe that my kids should go to a different school from your kids.” — Andrew [40:31]
• Babies & Children: Generational conflicts and the assimilation of the children who become further removed from their parents' culture and language.
• Traitors, Last Day, A Disappearance: War comes; rumors, forced relocations, and the sudden erasure of families from their communities.

5. Memorable Moments and Quotes

• On Otsuka’s Rationale for “We”:
  “Using the we voice allowed me to tell a much larger story than I would have otherwise. ...Each sentence gives you a brief window into somebody’s life and then we move on.” — Craig reading Otsuka [31:41]
• Evoking Immigrant Dreams and Trauma:
  Passage: “One wanted to become a tomato grower like his father. One wanted to become anything but. ...And even though we saw the darkness coming, we said nothing and let them dream on." — Andrew [47:17]
• Contemporary Parallels:
  Real-life connections are made between the novel’s account of community raids and separation, and current immigration enforcement and ICE raids in U.S. cities.
  “If you are reading this now in 2025... it is hard not to think about the way that ICE and other federal agencies are starting to operate in communities ... it is really, like, reaching deep into communities and just, like, grabbing people out of them.” — Andrew [54:05]
• On Bystanders to History:
  “It never occurred to us to stop and read one [notice]. They weren’t for us, we say... So, yeah, it's... it is easy to be wrapped up enough in… whatever it is that you are going through personally, that you don’t have time to turn your attention to the plight of other people.” — Andrew [61:24–61:51]

6. Narrative Closing and Critique

• A Disappearance shifts the “we” from the Japanese community to the white townspeople, illustrating how easily trauma is ignored or forgotten by bystanders.
  • “[The final chapter is] a complacent voice that is meant to provide a stark contrast with the vigilant, uneasy perceptions that have preceded it.” — Craig quoting NYT review [66:48]
• Mixed Critical Response: Some reviews longed for a continued focus on the picture brides themselves, but the hosts defend Otsuka’s choice to reflect the experience of erasure.

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Julie Otsuka’s background and intent: 08:09–17:25
• Historical context on internment/incarceration: 09:01–13:42
• Discussion of picture brides/historical setup: 14:35–17:25
• On narrative style, “we” perspective: 21:12–26:56
• Structural breakdown (chapters/themes): 27:22–28:38
• Passage on immigrant children’s dreams: 46:57–49:52
• War, removal, and contemporary parallels: 50:49–55:07
• The closing shift in perspective (“A Disappearance”): 55:07–61:24
• Author interview & rationale for ending: 57:56–58:54
• Discussion of the book’s relevance and hosts’ feelings: 61:24–64:51

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Notable Quotes

• “Each sentence gives you a brief window into somebody’s life and then we move on.” – (Julie Otsuka, by way of Craig) [31:41]
• “[The book has] an infinite branching path that the first person plural opens up to.” — Andrew [35:45]
• “It is easy to be wrapped up enough in... whatever it is that you are going through personally, that you don’t have time to turn your attention to the plight of other people.” — Andrew [61:43]
• “If you feel like these women are being taken from you, they are. That is... what the book is.” — Craig (on the abrupt loss of the “we” voice) [66:48]

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Overall Tone & Takeaways

Warm, thoughtful, and with moments of humor, this episode thoughtfully examines The Buddha in the Attic as both literature and witness. The hosts praise Otsuka’s ambitious use of point of view, the power of representing collective memory, and the resonance of the book’s themes in the present day. They grapple with the challenges of responding to injustice, both then and now, and encourage listeners to consider their own roles as bystanders or collective actors.

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For more:

• Visit Overdue Podcast for episodes and reading schedules.
• Find resources on responding to ICE raids and supporting immigrant communities in the show notes.

Transcript

[Andrew]

This is a headgum podcast. Craig, I know you love audiobooks.

[Craig]

I do love audiobooks.

[Andrew]

So the good news for you and for anybody else who likes audiobooks is that this episode of Overdue is brought to you by Audible and the Audible original Pride and Prejudice. You want to know more about this thing?

[Craig]

Please tell me more.

[Andrew]

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[Craig]

This new adaptation, Andrew, is vibrant. It sounds like to me you're just telling me about it. It's vibrant and it's modern. With an original new score by Grammy nominated composer. Whether you're fresh to Pride and Prejudice or you want to revisit a cherished favorite, you're in for a new and delightful listening experience. Before enemies to lovers, there was Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy. Pride and Prejudice is globally recognized as one of the greatest romance novels and ever written. So listen to the new Pride and [e-mail] janeaustin that's audible.com j a n E A U S T E N.

[Andrew]

While Andrew and Craig believe the joy of discovery is crucial to enjoying any.

[Craig]

Well told tale, they will not shy.

[Andrew]

Away from spoiling specific story beats when necessary.

[Craig]

Plus, these are books you should have read by now. Hey everybody. Welcome to Overdue. It's a podcast about the books you've been meaning to read. My name is Craig.

[Andrew]

My name is Andrew.

[Craig]

Happy September, everyone.

[Andrew]

Happy September.

[Craig]

Happy fall.

[Andrew]

It's Craig's birthday.

[Craig]

It is my birthday. As we are not gonna.

[Andrew]

I'm not gonna say, I'm not gonna say what day we're recording on because I don't want to dox to dox you.

[Craig]

I got a very nice DM from one of our listeners who's been following me on social media enough to know when my birthday is.

[Andrew]

Yeah, you go. You only get to know if you've been playing the Craig arg for that's true out there.

[Craig]

You gotta find it. But yeah, it's my birthday. It's fine birthday.

[Andrew]

We're Going to have that. The month and month and several days where we're the same age.

[Craig]

Oh, it begins.

[Andrew]

How's it feel to be 39? I'm wondering. Everyone's wondering.

[Craig]

I. You know, it feels fine. We're going to talk about this week's book. Andrew, what did you read?

[Andrew]

I read the Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka.

[Craig]

Great. I want to hear about it but first I want to tell you that.

[Andrew]

To tell you about it.

[Craig]

39 feels so far like a tire Sunday. That's. I drove the car a bunch. I did get to see my friends. I did get to hang out with my son and my family. And I had to console him as I took him away from his favorite person, my mom. So yeah, you know, I'm just a mean man.

[Andrew]

Yeah. What have you done? What have you done? You introduced me to this person. You gave me to her. I know you're taking me away. What gives?

[Craig]

It's terrible but you know, that's what it feels like.

[Andrew]

Come on. The. On the wind down side at 39. I. I don't know. I did not have like a like a friends esque. My life is ending when I'm turning 30 moment.

[Craig]

No, you're feeling that way about 40 though.

[Andrew]

I'm feeling like my life is over. I'm feeling like my life is different. Like I can't. Yeah. And also like it's kind. 39 is kind of. I don't know. You. You feel weird saying oh I'm in my 30s. Because it's like are you though 39.

[Craig]

Does not feel like a real age.

[Andrew]

During the last of your 30.

[Craig]

It feels totally made up.

[Andrew]

Like I will. Yeah.

[Craig]

I don't 30s end at 37. 38 and 39 have been this weird.

[Andrew]

Little weird slide down into 40. Once you're 40, once you're down the muck, I think it's gonna feel fine. But like the slide down in there, especially with so much of our mid-30s kind of being consumed by pandemic stuff.

[Craig]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Andrew]

Kind of miss. Kind of missed some prime years in there, it feels like.

[Craig]

Yeah. Yeah, I do. And I do recall you weren't like particularly. You were like anti birthday when you turned 39. You were like not in the mood for it. But you do seem to be like vaguely in the mood to celebrate turning 40.

[Andrew]

Fine. Fine with it.

[Craig]

Just in the. But I get what, what you just said makes it make sense. You're like, you don't want to celebrate being in the like liminal hallway with like weird photos of Like a hotel with two toilets staring at each other or whatever. Like, that's what 39 sounds like to me.

[Andrew]

It's. It's the last mile of a. Of a race. And there's nothing to celebrate about the last mile of a race. You just do the last mile of it and then you're at the end of the race and then. And then you can celebrate.

[Craig]

Then you can celebrate. Okay, well, that, that will be what I do a year from now. And I look forward to doing that with you in about a month or so. I feel like I've got.

[Andrew]

But I do. For what it's worth. I don't know if that's 20, 25, world's ending. Only control what I can control.

[Craig]

Yes, it's been your mantra all year stuff.

[Andrew]

But just like, I don't know, I'm like more medicated than I was doing therapy. I did the furniture workshop.

[Craig]

You've done gardening.

[Andrew]

I did the garden. Like, I've had. I've had a.

[Craig]

You got a bike. You've done a lot of bike. 39.

[Andrew]

Yeah. Doing a lot of stuff.

[Craig]

Yeah. Okay.

[Andrew]

We're calling a midlife crisis. It's a midlife opportunity.

[Craig]

All right, well, let's talk. Let's get into our book podcast. For each week, one of us reads a book and tells the other person about it. Check in with me in a year, see how I feel. Andrew, you said you read the Buddha in the Attic by Julietsuka. I had not heard of Julie's work though, when I was researching and came across the title of her first novel, when the Emperor Was Divine. That did ring a bell, that one.

[Andrew]

Yeah, I'd heard it. This came up just some like typical, like best. Best novels of the year roundup lists for whatever year it came out. Yeah, I had not really heard of it. I had a good read. I am interested. Craig will be happy to learn that I'm interested to talk about the perspective of the novel. Like the literal nuts and bolts.

[Craig]

You caught me off guard when you were giving me flack about that a few weeks ago and have thought about it since. And I do just think it is one of the. It's one of the primary, like macro level tools that a novel has.

[Andrew]

It is a decision that. That most books kind of make early on and then that's just the way.

[Craig]

Kind of an like a parallel, a genre thing I was thinking about was when I read An Extraordinary Union and was reminded of kind of the romance trope of alternating POV chapters to like build kind of the tension between the two romantic leads. It's just like a smaller potatoes choice than what we're going to talk about this week, I'm fairly certain.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

But still like endemic to the genre anywhere. Anywhere.

[Andrew]

Anyway, anywhere right here is where we are.

[Craig]

Let's talk about Itsuka and then let's get into the book. So she was born in 1962 in Palo Alto, California. She studied art at Yale. Art? Yeah. Visual art, painting and sculpture.

[Andrew]

Cool.

[Craig]

She tried to make it as a painter for several years after getting her bachelor's. Enjoyed it. Has said in interviews that she had a gift for color but couldn't get over her self consciousness about her own work.

[Andrew]

Sure.

[Craig]

Decided to go back to school for writing and went to Columbia. And not long after she graduated from Colombia. I feel like her first novel was published if I did the math right. And that first novel was when the Emperor Was Divine. And this is it's the beginning of a kind of a loose trilogy that is not autobiographical fiction but fiction rooted in her family's and folks in her family's histories experience as Japanese Americans, particularly in the around World War II. So when the Emperor was Divine was even more explicitly about the, you know, inspired by her grandfather's experience as a suspected spy around when FDR signed Executive Order 9066 in 1942 which allowed the US government under wartime to just forcibly move people around the country. And specifically they used it to move Japanese Americans even though that was not in the text of the order. But everybody knew that's what it was for. And that, you know, has a long history of the US Government acknowledging that that was terrible or not. I did read an interesting article on NPR called NPR's PR.org euphemisms Concentration camps and the Japanese internment from 2012. I imagine you I don't know what terms the book uses, if any if it refers to them as the internment camps. I know that is the typical term that we are, you know, use in historical record here in the States.

[Andrew]

You do not spend any time in them and you never really find out what they are or you know that people are going to a place and you know that the government is ordering them there. A lot, a lot of what the book is operating in is like what collective memory looks like and especially like collective memory through a lens of, of hearsay or like how people's perceptions of events can can differ.

[Craig]

Sure.

[Andrew]

So yeah it's, it's never it's not like about the internment camps. It is about sort of the lead up to them and what and what kind of happened immediately, like surrounding it to communities that. That Japanese Americans were a part of. So we can talk more about that when we get to the end of the book. But it does, it does twist a bit at the end in the last, like, chapter I've heard about.

[Craig]

Interested to. To learn more. So, yeah, I think when the Emperor Was Divine is even more explicit about that experience. I just share that article because there's an interesting discussion around whether we should continue to use the term internment camps because of, like, the legal. What that means in. In who is being detained when this, you know, we were putting120,000 Japanese Americans into camps and many of them were actually US Citizens. So in turn may not actually be the accurate term we might want to use. Incarceration people have, have and have not used concentration camp on purpose because of the other connotations of that term, of course. So just put that out there because it is a pretty big, terrible stain on our nation's history. And I certainly was not taught much about it in school.

[Andrew]

Yeah, it's definitely been like, within the last, I don't know, a couple of decades. I think the, the visibility on it has gone up in terms of just like what you and I as.

[Craig]

Yep. White men on the east, white guys.

[Andrew]

Who aren't, like, looking into it are. Are finding out. I. I feel that the same time frame is around when I became sort of conscious of like, the, The Tulsa race massacre.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

Stuff. Just. Just things that, that we did not run into in our civics classes in, like, public school in America in, like, the, the 90s. It was early 2000s.

[Craig]

It was in the news in 2018, specifically the, the SCOTUS decision. Korematsu versus US or because it was cited and overturned in the Trump travel ban. The Hawaii travel ban case.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

Where Justice Roberts was like, yeah, Korematsu was bad. We shouldn't do that. But I think that they should probably let Trump keep doing what he's doing, which is really fun to read about.

[Andrew]

Those progressives in the first Trump administration. Even, even their approach was being. Was being repudiated.

[Craig]

And yeah, it was a wartime executive order that allowed them to forcibly remove Japanese Americans from their homes, claiming that they could just decide it was a military zone. And they did that after Pearl Harbor. It was terrible.

[Andrew]

Yeah, a lot of stuff about. And the book goes into this. Some, A lot, A lot of stuff about. Oh, it's, you know, these are all just sleeper cells of, of people who are gonna be activated now. This Pearl harbor attack has happened.

[Craig]

So she, you know, her family was directly impacted by this. Her grandfather was assumed to be a spy and was taken. Her grandmother, mother and uncle were put in a camp in Utah for three years. And many of them just didn't talk about it. She know that. She knows that it happened and that's about the information that she has. She said in, in a number of interviews that as she is writing about this kind of stuff, she is making a lot of it up. Like it's not based on her family, other than that these events involved her family.

[Andrew]

She has a wide range of citations in a note at the end of the book, but it's not like she's telling any one person's story. Specific stories.

[Craig]

Yes. And so this book, her second novel released in 2011, the Buddha in the Attic, it is based on the concept of picture brides. I don't know. Is that term used in the novel, Andrew?

[Andrew]

No, I mean, it's, it's, it's. The term is not. The concept is represented. Yes.

[Craig]

So this was a practice of, you know, matching brides and grooms using only photographs, specifically out of Japan.

[Andrew]

And it's like the apps. Korea.

[Craig]

Oh, it's. Yeah, worse than the apps.

[Andrew]

I'm getting catfished by this guy and his 15 year old picture that he sent me.

[Craig]

It was an important practice for labor for Asian laborers in Hawaii, the west coast of us. There were a lot of Japanese Americans in Hawaii and a lot of single men would make the trip. Uh, but then they'd get there and there'd be a desire for family or maybe their employers would want them to like, settle down. Um, and so they would help facilitate this. There were all manners of reason for women to go. Some were probably forced, some wanted opportunities, some maybe wanted to get away from their families. All sorts of reasons though. Of course, there was also this, like the, the Gentleman Agreement of 1907, which would limit the number.

[Andrew]

One of the great agreements, one of.

[Craig]

The, I'm sure terrible agreements would limit the number of laborers from Japan and other Asian nations. But like, their wives and children can come.

[Andrew]

So it's just such a genteel name, I guess, is what I'm responding to about the Gentleman's Agreement of 1907.

[Craig]

And this is very, you know, nothing.

[Andrew]

With a name that bland is good.

[Craig]

So you would, you, you wouldn't be officially recognized as married in the States until you got here and got married. So there would be these like, big ceremonies at the docks when, you know, women arrived and, and actually met the men. That they were marrying for the very first time is, you know, so that. That. That is my understanding of the community that is this book. Are these Picture Brides is who she's writing about. And I want to kind of. I don't want to spoil the ending until we get ready to talk about it, Andrew, but she does talk in a lot of interviews. Atsuka does about. She had the ending first. She kind of knew that having written about the experience at the camps more explicitly in the first novel of hers, that she wanted. She had this impulse for how to view it from a different perspective. And then she worked backwards from there.

[Andrew]

That makes sense. Yeah.

[Craig]

That's kind of what she is talking about. I'll save some quotes from her about that until I think we get into the novel.

[Andrew]

Okay, sure.

[Craig]

But yeah, she's a recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship. She won the Alex and Asian American Literary Award for Emperor. She was a finalist for the National Book Award for this novel, which also won the PEN Faulkner Award and the Langham Prize for Historical fiction. And I think her most recent novel is Swimmers. Or is it the Swimmers? I can't remember.

[Andrew]

There's an excerpt from that in the back of this.

[Craig]

Okay. That is about a mother daughter relationship dealing with dementia, which is part of her experience with her mom. And that one is a little less, you know, explicitly dealing with US history, but I'm sure it factors into it. So, yeah, yeah. That is Atsuka in a quick nutshell. I'm interested to learn more about this book.

[Andrew]

Andrew.

[Craig]

Andrew, you like a good writer of Rohan, right?

[Andrew]

Of course I do. I love them.

[Craig]

Fancy yourself a Balrog aficionado.

[Andrew]

Well, I mean, aficionado. I wouldn't want to like be up close to one.

[Craig]

Have you know of them ever wondered if Sauron could make a ring that ruled so hard even he couldn't, in the darkness, find it?

[Andrew]

I mean, I am now.

[Craig]

I'm building up to an ad read. Andrew, I need you to take over because I have. I've been whisked away by the ghosts of all the. Are the.

[Andrew]

The guys from the ships? Yeah, everything. Yeah, okay, the Grey Havens or whatever. Not the Gray Havens. That's the difference thing. Anyway, have you seen Craig? Have you seen the Lord of the Rings?

[Craig]

I have read J.R.R. tolkien's books.

[Andrew]

If you're even remotely a fan of Middle Earth, you owe it to yourself to check out the finest Tolkien podcast this side of Bree. The Prancing Pony podcast hosts Alan Sisto and Sean Marchese have spent years walking their listeners through Middle Earth, from the Hobbit to the Lord of the Rings, even the Silmarillion. Wonder what that must be like. There are just a couple of guys talking about their favorite books at the pub, so jump on in and have a listen.

[Craig]

The Prancing Pony Podcast is a great way for first time readers to learn the basics and more. And a welcome deep dive for all the Middle Earth veterans out there. Bad puns, dad jokes, Monty Python quotes, hilarious digressions, and an active community of other listeners are waiting for you in the common room at the Prancing Pony Podcast. So check out the Prancing Pony Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts. Did I put the clothes in the dryer?

[Andrew]

I hope they don't think I was sick. I need to be awake. I have my brain shut. Just sleep already.

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[Craig]

All right, Andrew, the the Point of View Sicko has logged on. I'm ready for you. Tell me the other novel is. Before we dive in here, I know this is like a. From some of the reviews I've read. Like, it's like kind of poetry prose stuff happening a little. You know you read Orbital a few months ago, right. Which also had kind of like a, a floaty poetry esque vibe to it. Just like. Let me know.

[Andrew]

I don't know. I don't know. Poetry is the. Is the thing I'd use, but I know what you're talking about. There's like a, there's a, there's a floaty. I don't even know if dreamy is the. Is the way.

[Craig]

Okay, describe it.

[Andrew]

But just like a. There's a, there's a Zen quality to it and something. Some. The, the first, your first run in with that in this book is that it uses repetition a lot.

[Craig]

Oh sure.

[Andrew]

And you, you know, you know when you start a. For a new book for the first time. And you're getting used to the voice, and you're getting used to the way it's. It's telling its story. And especially at the beginning, the. The question's always like, okay, is this. Is this an intro of some kind? And then it's going to shift gears as you. As you get on in, or is this how the whole thing is go be. Especially with how this. The book starts is. It's. It's people. This is. This is primarily about Japanese women coming to the US and then living lives for a couple of decades and then having those lives kind of swept out from under them by this executive order and the Japanese internment of. Of. Or the American internment of Japanese American citizens during World War II. And so you're starting with, you know, a bunch of people on a boat and they're traveling and they're coming to a place to do a thing. And you wonder, you know, is. Is this. Is this the voice that it's using? Is this just gonna be on the boat? And then once we get to America, where we're going, are we gonna zero in more specifically on people? And. And we're gonna change? And that. That ends up not being how it goes. Like, the whole. The whole book is. Is in this. This sort of register. Okay, so I have a couple of different. Different quotes.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

Here is just describing what home is to some of these immigrants who have come to America and are now living this life that they did not expect to be living.

[Craig]

Great.

[Andrew]

Home was a cot in one of their bunk houses at the Fair ranch in yolo. Home was a long tent beneath a leafy plum tree at Kettleman's. Home was a wooden shanty in Camp Number seven on the Barnhart tract out in Lodi. Nothing but rows of onions as far as the eye can see. And it keeps going in that, like, home was a home was a home was.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

And that. That happens a lot. And it's. It's a. And. And when it, you know, when it shifts to being about talking about the people rather than talking about, like, an object or a place, it's always using this first person plural. Like, it's always we, you know, we did something.

[Craig]

Okay. Yes.

[Andrew]

Something like this for us. And so this story is all kind of operating in this first person plural register. And when you're doing a story like this, where part of what you're doing is, like, representing an underrepresented experience.

[Craig]

Yep.

[Andrew]

I feel like the question is all, you know, when you're trying to give a voice to A group of people or a kind of person who you don't normally see in media. I think there can be this tension between, you know, are we telling the story of an individual? And trying to, like, through that one person, like, represent this whole range of experiences. I think there can be pressured sometimes to make this person represent, like, too many facets of the experience.

[Craig]

We've read books where that happens, and we've also read books where the author has bravely decided, I don't care about that. This is the person I care about, which is.

[Andrew]

Yeah. Or like, and when you're in. When and when you're doing like. Like that, can. Can the reader, you know, infer too much about how universal that character's experience is for the group that's kind of being represented? And so this. This book has an interesting solution to that, which is the. Through the use of this kind of, like, individual collective perspective. Like, they're. They're always speaking for a plural, like we or are, but occasionally you will. So the last line of that bit that I just read, the nothing but rows of onions, as far as the eye can see, it is a. It's in italics, and it is diving down further into some specific thing about that last sentence. The home was a wooden shanty sentence, sure. Giving you a little bit more from one individual person about, like, some aspect of their experience. Like, it is using the we in the hour always. But then every once in a while, it will, through the use of the italics, like, drill down to an anecdote that's so specific that it could only have happened to one person.

[Craig]

Well, and even the repetition of the home was a home was a home was a. Which is a fun way to put it. That is giving you. To me, that's like the camera panning across, like, a group of people, but giving each face, like, you know, a second in the frame. Right? It's like home. Home was for one person, it was this. For one person, it was this. For another person, it was this. But by not zooming in on any of those people, it still keeps it in this collective, which is really interesting. And he had multiple reviews, kind of for better and for worse Name checked this, like, repetitive structure that she employs regularly. And I. It's. Thank you for front loading that because it does make sense to me now, like, why it's useful to her and, like, what it's doing, as opposed to just being a poetic, like, rhythm thing.

[Andrew]

And so what. You know, when. When you do a. When. When you're doing a. I mean, I don't know. I'm. Maybe that's going too broad. The way that this book uses that is it's because it's decided, okay, we're doing this. This individual collective perspective, this first person plural perspective. I'm going to split the book up into chapters, and each of the chapters going to be about, like, a different facet of the experience, and it's seeding forward in time, like, linearly.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

So the first chapter is called Come Japanese. And that's about coming over on the boat the next chapter's first night. And that is about. We've gotten to America. We found out that most of the guys who we have come here to marry are not who they say we are. But this is life now anyway. And are we. And there's a lot of focus on the. The sexual experience. Mostly the, like, a couple of. Of people who are enjoying themselves, but a lot of people who are not.

[Craig]

Yep.

[Andrew]

Next chapter is called Whites Just like getting. Getting to know the. The people who live in this. This new place. Babies is the next one. Then the children, then Traders, which is not T R A D E R S but traitors. Traitors. This is about when the.

[Craig]

Not the hit television show that everybody seems to like. No.

[Andrew]

When the war is a common. And everybody starts seeing Japanese Americans as like, these people not to be trusted.

[Craig]

Yep.

[Andrew]

And then last day and then a disappearance. Those are all the chapters of the book.

[Craig]

Okay. Okay.

[Andrew]

And yeah, each. Each one is just going through, like, for babies, it's a. It's a chapter exclusively about.

[Craig]

It's four babies. It's four little.

[Andrew]

It's four little babies. So it's about. It's about giving birth and about having little tiny babies and just how everybody's experience was doing that.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

We gave birth easily in two hours and then got a headache that stayed with us for five years. We gave birth six weeks after our husband had left us to a child we now wish we had never given away. Italics after her, I was never able to conceive another. We gave birth secretly in the woods to a child our husband knew was not his. We gave birth on top of a faded floral bedspread in a brothel in Oakland. Just going on in the same way.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

And again was a bit.

[Craig]

It's doing the thing where, like, it's we every time, but it's always like a single instance of activity, which is just. It reminds me, and I don't mean this as a pejorative, it reminds me of, if I don't know, the work very well, to know if there's an. A specific passage in the Vagina Monologues that it uses this register. But it reminds me of stuff that I've seen that is definitely inspired by that. Where it is this like. And especially I've seen it with works about and by women that is this. Like, we have been marginalized. We have a collective shared voice that is powerful and, and needs to be heard. How do we put that out there? And it is often about, like, we all have these individual experiences, but there is an aggregate that is important and, and bearing witness to how much of us have been unheard before is something that is worth doing.

[Andrew]

Yeah. And even, even when it's doing. I, I think part, part of the point of doing it this way is to be able to represent like, a broad range of perspectives and not just to say, like, this. This was always one way for one.

[Craig]

Yep.

[Andrew]

Kind of person. She. But even when you say. Sure, when. When you say stuff like, we gave birth easily in two hours and then got a headache that stayed with us for five years. Like, you. You don't need to. Not everybody needs to like, meet, like, hit those exact numbers. But you can still see in that, oh, birth was easy. And then the part after, after the birth was physically difficult. Like, you're still capturing a wide range of experiences where somebody might read that and like, hit something that resonates with them, even if the exact specifics of it don't line up with their experience. Does that make sense?

[Craig]

No, it makes total sense. Yeah. So you're, you're pushing back on my assertion that it's a bunch of like, individual snapshots creating the Wii.

[Andrew]

It is that. But. But it's also careful to be like, yes, I. I'm going to capture people who are having a bad time, people who are having a good time. People are having like, every possible kind of time in between.

[Craig]

Yep, yep.

[Andrew]

And yes, there, there's specificity to that, but it's one of those kinds of specificity that, like, it evokes a certain kind of, like a genre of experience, a type of experience that people can still kind of bring their own experience to and then see themselves in.

[Craig]

There was an interview with her on granta granta.com where she talked about this book. She said using the we voice allowed me to tell a much larger story than I would have been able to tell otherwise. At first, I tried telling the story from the point of view of a single picture bride, but this approach felt too narrow and confining. In my research, I'D run across so many fascinating stories and I wanted to tell them all. Using the we voice allowed me to weave them all in. It's a very capacious and infinitely expandable voice. Each sentence gives you a brief window into somebody's life and then we move on. She says that her father, who immigrated from Japan after World War II, once said to me, japan is the opposite of America. Meaning. I think she says that here in America, the emphasis on the individual, it made sense to speak of the picture Brides as a collective entity, Japan being a group oriented culture.

[Andrew]

She says, yeah, sure.

[Craig]

Okay. So, yeah, it's kind of interesting to hear that she thought about doing it as a single. And like, to your point, I can envision a novel that has like five brides and we're kind of like one of them is the main character and we're gonna like get.

[Andrew]

Or like. Yeah, you have like a main character. And then she's like friends with a bunch of other ones and then they like tell her about how their experience was different. And yeah, yeah, it's easy to like.

[Craig]

With this kind of interesting take to be like, novels are silly, huh? We could do it the traditional way with multiple characters, like, you know, peons, like people who've been doing it forever. Or we could do this cool new way where it was all part of the Wii, baby.

[Andrew]

The Wii Voice. Also, one of my favorite video games of the late. The late 2000s is Wii voice. You had to get the motion, like the extra motion you needed to use.

[Craig]

The heart sensor that they were planning to release. Right. That never came out. Right. The hard.

[Andrew]

No, it never did. I think. I don't. Was that a Wii U thing? This is. Okay, back to the book, please.

[Craig]

And away.

[Andrew]

And away from failed Nintendo video game accessories. I don't know. Is there any, like, specific.

[Craig]

I'd love to.

[Andrew]

So we. We've covered. We've already covered your biggest. Yeah, you know, your cache of questions, which is all about like the, the perspective that it's from and what person it is and how it's deployed. I've talked about that already without even being asked.

[Craig]

That's true.

[Andrew]

And so now. And so now what do you want?

[Craig]

Well, I want to know about.

[Andrew]

What is your problem?

[Craig]

What happens? Tell me a little bit more about some of the, the chapters and how they stood out to you.

[Andrew]

Yeah, so. So it is, it's important that, you know, the book mentions things like, like J Town, like the Japanese part of like a specific city, but it's never. And it's kind of sort of implied that it must be a city more on the west coast, because I think the worry about. About rounding people up was. Was worse on that coast than it would have been. And also that, you know, that would have been the direction where people were mostly coming from. But you never. It's not, it's not. It doesn't take place in one city.

[Craig]

Of course not. No.

[Andrew]

And it's. The perspective is always kept broad enough that it could be, you know, the, the. We could just be people who came over in one specific boat and then all of them tracing all their experiences. It could be everybody who came over in any boat. I think it's more of the second one than the first one.

[Craig]

Kind of neat, though, that it doesn't. That it's really not choosing. Yeah, it's kind of interesting. Okay.

[Andrew]

Yeah. Yeah. So the, the come Japanese chapter is everybody's on the boat. Here are the experiences that we're going to have on the boat. Like, we, we are, you know, you know, here's what we are running from. Here's what we are hoping about the men who are, you know, husbands have. Have purported to be.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

You know, some of us sleep with. With like, deck hands on the boat and we, and then we give birth six months after we get to, you know, get to America and we look at our new husband and we say, he has your eyes. And we, and that's how we kind of deflect from that. Some of us sleep with a deckhand and we decide that we can't do this anymore and we jump off or try to stay with this person or we, you know, it's. You can't talk about this book without coming back to that, like that infinite branching path that the first person plural kind of opens you up to. But yeah, each chapter is kind of pointing in a direction like it's, it's cultivating a vibe. And the vibe here is a bunch of people coming from a place where, you know, they're leaving broadly voluntarily. Okay. Yeah. Maybe some of them have been lied to to get them onto the boat. But it does seem like mostly people are coming to this, like, promised land of plenty where they can live in these big houses and they can, you know, they can. They can all partake in the American dream. And we know that that dream has always been accessible to different people in. Or not accessible to different people.

[Craig]

No one knew that the great. That the American dream wasn't real until the Great Gatsby was published. That's. That's my theory.

[Andrew]

It's true. And like these. Then most people wouldn't even have been reading the Great Gatsby at the time.

[Craig]

So that's what I'm saying. That doesn't come out till 1925. And so we don't know that the American dream is a nightmare. Until 19, 1925, everybody thought that it was real.

[Andrew]

Yeah, it's a. It's a. It's a chapter that's very anticipatory. Like. Yeah, you're just kind of. You're waiting. You're traveling over and you're waiting.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

You're getting to know this kind of collective group of people and where they're. And where they're coming from and where they are the same and where they have divisions among them. You know, like people from different parts of Japan think of each other differently.

[Craig]

Okay. Yeah.

[Andrew]

And then you get to the First Night chapter, and predominantly the experience of the first night is this man is not who he said he was, and he is now, like, forcing himself on me. Actually. It's. It's not the experience of everybody, but again, each chapter. Each chapter, while still representing a very wide swath of possible experiences, still has a. Like a main picture, I think, that is trying to. To paint.

[Craig]

Yeah. Okay. Okay.

[Andrew]

Even while it's acknowledging, you know, not. You know, not. Hashtag, not all.

[Craig]

Yeah. It does seem like a book that kind of has to nod to a hashtag. Notallpicture Brides experienced this, but she does.

[Andrew]

It wants to, like, it wants to find the. The nuance in that. It wants to acknowledge that people whose experience, like, deviates from the mean.

[Craig]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Andrew]

It's still interesting. And it makes it. It makes it more interesting to, like, know that people had a different range of experiences.

[Craig]

Sure. But, yeah. Largely a bad experience on the first night, it sounds like. Yeah.

[Andrew]

And like. And. And so the chapter about whites, like, it is a lot of the stuff in First Night and in Whites both is about the kind of work that they're doing. Like, they are mainly doing work that is pretty, like, menial. A lot of it is out in the fields. There are some people who are, like, maids or, I don't know, whatever the. The early 20th century equivalent of a governess would be in America, I think surely there are some governesses, right?

[Craig]

Yeah. Or what do we call them? What's. It's. What's the French au pair? Yeah, an au pair. When we're like, what are we doing? Just say nanny. Just say expensive nanny. We're American rubes. Just say expensive.

[Andrew]

But. But not Only displaying like how, how everybody lives are, are working out in this new country so far, but also giving you little bits of how, how Japanese people hear themselves being compared to other kinds of, of immigrants.

[Craig]

Oh, okay.

[Andrew]

And most mostly favor favorably like they are, you know, they're more like trustworthy than, than this group of people or, you know, they're better than Chinese people because they don't smoke opium and gamble all the time. Yeah. This is how you, this is how you get some of the, the, the good racism.

[Craig]

The good old fashioned racism.

[Andrew]

That good, that good racism where people were just like racist and they weren't trying to be like, I'm not racist. I just really strongly believe that my kids should go to a different school from your kids.

[Craig]

Yeah. I just strongly believe that the shape of someone's brain is important, but it's not about race. It's just like what your head just.

[Andrew]

People from a certain race happen to mostly have heads that look the certain people.

[Craig]

It's, it's. I laugh because it's so just nonsensical. And yet unfortunately it is what makes.

[Andrew]

It, it's one thing that's made it so like, difficult to grapple with the real world.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

Because, because people who are racist.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

Have had so much time to sort of pretty it up a little bit and make it look like something else.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

We should have given them really. We should say, yeah, they got too.

[Craig]

Much time in the tent to make their, you know, showstopper. You know, we gotta like cut it off.

[Andrew]

Oh, no, we can't bring that. We can't do that. There's some racist stuff that's happened in that tent though.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

Well, I just, I just think we gotta take the, the Mexican week.

[Craig]

They can't do Mexican week anymore. Not allowed. Stick to bread week. Bread week. Every week.

[Andrew]

Every week is bread. What are we talking about? We're talking about whites.

[Craig]

Yes. Yeah, yeah, we are. His name is Paul Hollywood. Continue.

[Andrew]

I found the, the Babies into Children chapters to be really interesting. Like every, you know, every chapter is interesting. Like I said, I had a good read. But in the children chapter especially you get to see, you know, people, like I said, come, have come to America broadly, sort of voluntarily. Like not, not, you know, obviously you get individual perspectives in here of people who wish they hadn't come, people who did go back, people who wanted to go back, but still people who are, are holding on to parts of their culture or like, see their Japanese heritage as like part of, of themselves. And so they have these kids and some of Them, you know, grow up to be like these huge giant boys. And a lot of them want to have like sort of anglicized names instead of using the, the traditional Japanese names that they were given when they were born. And observing this, you know, not, not everybody who came over was able to, to learn English to the same degree. And so I think you have this. I, I think this is, this. I've read a lot about this playing out with, with immigrant families where like the parents spoke Spanish but the kids don't speak a lot of it or they speak this like grammatically semi incorrect like version of Spanish that's like becoming its own thing.

[Craig]

Oh sure, yeah, yeah.

[Andrew]

Just that the way, the way that people interact with the language of their parents is interesting, but basically seeing, seeing their kids assimilate in ways that they, that they never could have. And still, you know, still their kids will, will struggle with, with white people, with other people in the community who don't want to interact with them because of the way that they look or, or you know, the way that their parents are. But they, they can, they can go into a store and like make their thoughts known. Like that's one of the, that's one of the little anecdotes that is, that is brought up is you can, you can and you can communicate to somebody else like what it is that you want and that, that they can do that, that the children can do that makes their experience so different from what mine has been that it's just like totally different. It's something that's totally inaccessible to me.

[Craig]

She gets a little bit of that. And there's an interview with the Believer thebeliever.net where she talks some strange websites. Yeah, I think this I want to.

[Andrew]

Say, I think I'm gonna say it's like the vibrant blogging and community of like the early 2000s Internet maybe is. Is contributing to this interview.

[Craig]

I did occur, I think around when the swimmers came out because it does talk about anti Asian hate during like COVID lockdown and stuff.

[Andrew]

Yeah, yeah.

[Craig]

But she does speak to the difference between her experiencing her experience growing up and that of her parents or, or I guess her mom and their family that. What was it, 1964? Five, I think is when there's a change in the immigration laws that like stop the limits, the hard limits, really strict ones anyway on immigration from Japan and other countries in that region. And so her growing up, yes, she certainly experienced racism and you know, white people being just idiots, but there were just more people who looked like her around, you know, than even a generation or two prior because of the prior strict limits. And I think that is an interesting echo of what you're saying, which is like the next generation has an immediately different and profoundly different experience than the folks who came over on the boat. Right. Just like I think that is underpinning how she's writing about this, even though she's writing about like the prior generations split.

[Andrew]

Yeah. You know, and so the other. The. I think the reason I like the, the, the Children chapter sticks with me so much is partly because of. Of how it's representing that, you know, that, that part of the immigrant experience that I think is, is true of a lot of different kinds of immigrants who have, who have come to the US and sort of experienced what, what the second generation of that looks like relative to what the first generation of it looks like. And then it also is, is doing a. Well, you know, not everything's going to be rosy for these, these kids either. So the, the transition from the end of the Children chapter into the beginning of the Traitors chapter.

[Craig]

I'll just, I'll just read the whole, like, real tour. I know what you're saying.

[Andrew]

I'm saying it like Mr. Spock, because I want it to be clear what word I'm.

[Craig]

It's like what I add for realtors and why. I'm like always like, why do they say real tour?

[Andrew]

No, I'm not. I'm talking about sensors. I'm like, I'm just trying to. I'm trying to make sure it's clear what word I'm saying.

[Craig]

Yes, okay, go ahead.

[Andrew]

I'll just read the whole part of. So this is, this is right before we get to traitors. Still they dreamed, One swore she would one day marry a preacher so she wouldn't have to pick berries on Sundays. One wanted to save up enough money to buy his own farm. One wanted to become a tomato grower like his father. One wanted to become anything but. One wanted to plant a vineyard. One wanted to start his own label. I call it Fukuda Orchards. One could not wait until the day she got off the ranch. One wanted to go to college, even though no one she knew had ever left the town. I know it's crazy, but one loved living out in the country and never wanted to leave. It's better here. Nobody knows who we are. One wanted something more, but could not say exactly what it was. This just isn't enough. One wanted a swing king drum set with high hat symbols. One wanted a spotted pony. One Wanted his own paper route. One wanted her own room with a lock on the door, and anyone who came in would have to knock first. One wanted to become an artist and live in a garret in Paris. One wanted to go to refrigeration school. You can do it through the mail. One wanted to build bridges. One wanted to play the piano. One wanted to operate his own fruit stand alongside the highway instead of working for somebody else. One wanted to learn shorthand at the Merit Secretarial Academy and get an inside job in an office. Then I'd have it made. One wanted to become the next great togo on the professional wrestling circuit. One wanted to become a state senator. One wanted to cut hair and open her own salon. One had polio and just wanted to breathe without her iron lung. One wanted to become a master seamstress. One wanted to become a teacher. One wanted to become a doctor. One wanted to become his sister. One wanted to become a gangster. One wanted to become a star. And even though we saw the darkness coming, we said nothing and let them dream on. And so that's. Not only is that telling you what. What. What's coming and that, I think that is you knowing nothing about the book coming in. That sentence is when I was like, oh, that. That's what this book is.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

That's what the pivot point of this. Of this book is going to be.

[Craig]

Yep, yep.

[Andrew]

World War II stuff. And also, like, even though it is. It is collective about this community of people, it's still very. It's very firmly rooted in that. The. The people who came over on. On the boat. Like, it is. It's talking about.

[Craig]

I was.

[Andrew]

It's still.

[Craig]

It's still.

[Andrew]

It's still giving you. Here's this wide range of experiences of all these things that all these children want to do. But you're not talking in the first person. Then you're talking. You're talking about.

[Craig]

One wanted this. One. It's very American.

[Andrew]

And then you get. Yeah, to the end, and it's like, well, we saw this coming for these other. This other group of people, and we let them dream on.

[Craig]

That's one of those. Like, it's artful and great. And also, she did say in a Harper's interview, she was like, it posed grammatical challenges. Like, it was very different. And like, there's no unity of place or character. Like, she's just like, I can see this was hard.

[Andrew]

Yeah, get. Like, that's how. That's the. The conversation with yourself that results in that little italic.

[Craig]

It's great.

[Andrew]

First person thing.

[Craig]

And I could. I could. Good delivery, Andrew. I could hear them when they were happening.

[Andrew]

Thank you. I was trying to.

[Craig]

But no, that was. You started that passage. And I was like, but this is all one. One would. One would. One wants. One wants. And then we go back to the Wii. Fire up some bowling. Anyway.

[Andrew]

To the Wii?

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

They're releasing Mario Galaxy and Mario Galaxy 2 for the Switch.

[Craig]

Okay. And then it goes into traitors.

[Andrew]

And then it goes into traitors. And the first sentence of traitors is the rumors began to reach us on the second day of the war. And, like, at this point, you're not being like, well, what war? Are they talking?

[Craig]

No, you know.

[Andrew]

You know which one it is, man. And it just starts. It starts talking about. And this is all very. It's all hearsay. Nobody knows exactly what's going on. And that's just like, contributing to this, like, climate of. Of uncertainty and fear, you know, There was talk of a list, some people being taken away in the middle of the night. A banker who went to work and never came home. A barber who disappeared during his lunch break. A few fishermen who had gone missing here and there. A boarding house raided, a business seized, a newspaper shut down. But this was all happening somewhere else, in distant valleys and faraway towns, in the big city where all the women wore high heels and lipstick and danced until late in the night. Nothing to do with us, we said. We were simple women who lived quietly and kept to ourselves. Our own husbands would be safe. Hmm. And obviously, like, nobody. Nobody is safe. Like, the reading of the. Of the traitors chapter is all about it, like, sort of gradually shifting from a thing that it. That might be happening to someone somewhere else to a thing that everyone. It begins to happen to you in your own community, you know? You know, like it. If you are reading this now in 2025, I think you are reading these last few chapters especially, and it is hard not to think about the way that ICE and other, like, federal agencies are starting to operate in communities, especially in American cities, which have been, like, singled out.

[Craig]

Yep.

[Andrew]

It's terrible for political reasons.

[Craig]

Yep.

[Andrew]

There is a. There's a guy who owns and runs a little, like, a cafe diner thing that opened up, like, I don't know, like, 18 months ago, like, not too long after we moved into the neighborhood. And, like, six weeks before this happened, we'd been in there and he had, like, served us food and, like, made. It was just like, me and Sue's in there, like, having breakfast, because I think it was just before her new job had started. And we were just like, getting breakfast together, just me and her. While Henry was at camp.

[Craig]

Yep.

[Andrew]

And he was in there and he was making jokes about how, like. Like how loud the. The music. He likes to keep the music when nobody else was in there. And that it was silly that we did not just, like, take a seat wherever we wanted because there was nobody else in the restaurant. We obviously do whatever. And then not even two months after that, like, it's his daughter, I think on GoFundMe or a similar site, being like. Yeah, he got. He got taken by ICE because of something.

[Craig]

Yep.

[Andrew]

He. Because he'd pleaded out on something that happened, like, almost two decades ago. And. And now they've got him in the facility and they're processing him and they're gonna send it back. And it's. Yeah, it's just like, it is not that. Not that it hasn't been real before this. Like, I'm not. I'm not under no illusions about how good, like, the first Trump administration, even the Biden people were on immigration enforcement. But, like.

[Craig]

Yep.

[Andrew]

It is really, like, reaching deep into communities and just, like, grabbing people out of them.

[Craig]

Oh, yeah, there was. There was a. There was like, reportedly a raid in Philly. In South Philly. Like, literally the park that. Right next to where Lauren.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

Used to live.

[Andrew]

Yeah. Just the other day about that.

[Craig]

And I know I've neighbors and friends who's like, their kids. Classmates are not going to school right now because of the potential for what could happen on the walk to school or while your kid is out of the house. It's pretty terrible. And yeah, that. That was the reaction from some of the folks who were reading along with us in. In our discord. We're just like, wow, this is a pretty interesting, cool book that is very moving and unfortunately incredibly relevant for what it's about and what is happening to these folks.

[Andrew]

Yeah. So traitors into Last Day is about people hearing this is going to happen. This is coming. We are preparing for the worst, and we're not even sure what the worst is going to be. We are sure that it's never gonna happen to us. You know, it's. It's still sticking in that we register. And then Last Day is kind of, you know, the. The proclamation comes down, the executive order assigned. There are notices, like, stapled polls all through the town, and everybody just has to. Everybody has to pack up and leave, and everybody leaves. And then you get to the last chapter, which is the. A disappearance, and it's it's still first person plural, but it's, it's clear to you from the, from the outset that the, the perspective being represented has changed. The Japanese have disappeared from our town. Their houses are boarded up and empty now. Their mailboxes have begun to overflow. Unclaimed newspapers litter their sagging front porches and gardens. Abandoned cars sit in their driveways. Thick, naughty weeds are sprouting up through their lawns. In their backyards, the tulips are wilting. Stray cats wander last. Loads of laundry still cling to the line. In one of their kitchens. Emmy Satos. A black telephone rings and rings. And it's one thing I think that this chapter does that is interesting is in the same way that the other chapters are not saying this is all one way for this group of people. This is, this is highlighting a lot of people who are like, you know, it's teachers being upset that, like, three kids are not in their class anymore and, like, how great those kids were. It's. It's people, it's kids who were friends with these kids who, like, you know, I have. He left a sweater at my house last time he was here, and now I feel awful. Yep, it's. It's, you know, it's kids asking wherever, where everybody's gone and is somebody gonna come and grab us next? It's like people not being able to, to go to a store that they liked. It's. And the, the Last Aid stuff does, does some of this too. Just like a lot of small gestures of kindness from, from people in communities where not everybody had always accepted them. And yes, then it gets to, you know, some people say it's for the best. You know, some people say it was dangerous that they were around. Some people say, you know, you didn't know who you could trust. There were good ones and bad ones that kind of, that kind of stuff, like, you definitely get. It's not trying to like, gloss over nativism or racism or any of the stuff that, that resulted in this, but you do get a lot of people thinking, you know, what. What else could we have done? Could we have said something to somebody?

[Craig]

Yeah. So she Atsuka says in multiple interviews this is a quote from her Harper's interview from 2012. I actually knew my ending from almost the moment I started writing the novel. It grew out of a piece of unfinished business. For my first book, while touring for Emperor, I spoke to a number of Californians who'd been alive during World War II who told me they had, quote, no idea about the camps And I wondered, how could this be true? How could you not notice that your neighbors and classmates had suddenly disappeared? And in that interview and other ones, she talks like people shared stories where, you know, they had a classmate and then that kid went away and then came back like three years later. And they're like, where were you? And you're like, it was an 8 year old who then was like wondering why this 11 year old was back. So you might want to cut the 8 year old some slack. But also, what are any. What is anybody talking about?

[Andrew]

The last paragraph I want to read is about this.

[Craig]

Yeah. Yeah. And so it's just to. It seems like a really interesting. She's not somebody who writes novels quickly. And it is interesting that this novel really came out of organically what she found herself thinking about after the last one, which is like, okay, it is both a, like it's sort of a prelude to the, the concerns of the prior novel, but is also doing this whole other thing. And this last chapter is really part of it too. And I do just think, like, if you're gonna do a book with. And I don't say again, I don't say this to be mean, but like kind of a more gimmicky point of view, like a less traditional point of view. It does seem like she's found like the couple of iterations on it that make it worth doing, doing something that unique. Right. Like, I think if it didn't have a switch to it or it didn't have even the one wants, one wants, one wants section, it might be overly. It might get even too tiresome. But it's also not a long book. I don't know.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

So anyway, go ahead.

[Andrew]

This, this is from. This from the last chapter. So again, we're still, we're still coming at it from the perspective of the. The people who were left behind after the Japanese Americans have been relocated. You can still see the official notices nailed to the telephone poles on the street corners downtown, but already they're beginning to tatter and fade. And after last week's heavy spring rains, only the large black letters on top instructions to all persons of Japanese ancestry are still legible. But what it was exactly that these instructions spelled out none of us can clearly recall. One man vaguely remembers a no pets directive as well as a designated point of departure. I think it was the YMCA on West 5th street, he says, but he's not sure. A waitress of the Blue Ribbon Diner says she made several attempts to read the notice the morning it was posted, but found it impossible to get up close. All the telephone poles were surrounded by little clusters of concerned Japanese. She tells us what struck her was how quiet everyone was, how calm. Some of the Japanese, she says, were slowly nodding their heads. Others took notes. None of them said a word. Many of us admit that although we pass by the notices every day on our way into town, it never occurred to us to stop and read one. They weren't for us, we say. Or I always in a rush, or I couldn't make out a thing because the writing was just so small. So, yeah, it's. It's.

[Craig]

Yeah. One. Once, you know, it's quote not for us. That's an interesting. Huh. Okay.

[Andrew]

Yeah. So it's just like it is. It is easy and it's this. This also is super relevant, but, like, it is easy to be wrapped up enough in. In whatever it is that you are going through personally.

[Craig]

Yep.

[Andrew]

That you. That you don't have time to turn your, like, attention to the. The plight of other people.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

And it's hard to. It is hard to know, like, how to. How to do that. How to stay in the habit of doing that. Like, I'm not. I'm not saying I have answers to that, but. But again, a lot. A lot of what this last chapter wants to do is kind of reconciling how people can be people and they can. They can care and they can notice and they can not have wanted it to go the way that it did and yet still kind of not. Not even let it happen, but just kind of shrug and try to. Try to. Just try to push on through to whatever is next. You know what I mean?

[Craig]

Oh, yeah. Well. And it's not a. It's not interesting. It's not a book that seems to be like. And. And here's the person in the Pentagon who tried to stop it from happening. Like, it is too awful and too. Definitely happened to write a book about that. Like, that's not what she. At least from her perspective, it is. And it's not about whoever that is.

[Andrew]

Yeah. Like, you can. You can do the. The story about, like, the. The white guy in the administration who takes his glasses off and says, oh, I hope. I just know we're gonna live to regret what it is that we. What it is that we've just unleashed and, you know.

[Craig]

Yeah. Huh.

[Andrew]

Clear in that way that, you know, not everybody wanted it to go a bad way that it went. But.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

But this is. This is much more like individual, like, down at the ground kind of. This stuff is too Too big. And what can I, as one person do like that. That's what this is getting at for me.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

And it's something I've. I've definitely had a lot of, like, trouble with over the last few months is like, you, you. Like I said, you know, in a more. In a more like, hopeful and optimistic way at the beginning of the. Of the show, you know, so it's one of those, like, you control it because it's within your means to control it sort of things, but you can get focused enough on that stuff that.

[Craig]

It.

[Andrew]

I don't know, you're not paying attention to the places where your collectively. Where your energy as part of a larger collective of energy could make a difference in some of the bigger, harder, more horrible stuff.

[Craig]

Yep. I would encourage folks to read up on what they can do regarding ICE raids in their workplaces and things like that. That's like a thing that we can do collectively.

[Andrew]

Maybe you can link some resources to things that you're thinking of specifically.

[Craig]

I'll try to find some that we can put in the show notes. But yeah, the thing. Oh, I did want to ask about this, Andrew. There was at least one. I think it was the New York Times review that made a reference to. At some point in one of these last two chapters, some of the characters get names, or at least it names women. Did that clock for you.

[Andrew]

It. It does.

[Craig]

Feel right.

[Andrew]

It does that kind of throughout the book, though.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

It's like it does. It does say it will occasionally be like, so and so, like, talking about even. Even talking about, like, people's like, birth experiences and stuff. Every once in a while you'll get a name of somebody.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

Because I guess it does probably happen more in this. In this last couple of chapters, but I think especially in the. The last chapter, it's about the, like, the white community members who are left behind remembering individual, like store owners or other people that they might have seen. Like, there's more occasion. And part of the reason it does that is because there are also sections where it, you know, as this chapter goes on, it started with all these signs of like, these freshly empty houses, but then other people move into the houses and then you get to a year later and it's like we don't even really, you know, know sometimes we miss our nice, quiet Japanese neighbors and we wish they were still around because the people moved in we like even less.

[Craig]

Yeah. The. But the New York Times review from Alita B. Alita Becker did like the book, but didn't love the end, like the final chapter, which I think is interesting because it's like what Atsuka set out to write, kind of references this last chapter. It says it's a complacent voice that is meant to provide a stark contrast with the vigilant, uneasy perceptions that have preceded it. But Atsuka has succeeded too well in drawing us into the precarious lives of her Japanese wives and mothers. We have no patience with these smug, anonymous overlords. We want to follow the women whose names have been chanted out as they're torn from their new lives. And I do think that that is exactly what Asuka wanted you to feel. And if you feel like these women are being taken from you, they are. That is the. That sounds like what the book is. It's an interesting.

[Andrew]

I don't know, I can see wanting to. Wanting to get more from the. The, you know, follow them into the. Into.

[Craig]

Yeah. In the camps.

[Andrew]

Like. Yeah, say more. Like, say more about what that was like, because it's, you know, the. The whole book is. Is telling you what, what, what the experience of a certain kind of immigrant community coming into America at a certain time in America's history. Like, what. What that experience was. And then you kind of cut out at a. At a part where that experience is about to get, like, pretty bad.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

And also, and, you know, like, we talked about the beginning of the episode, also something that maybe not a lot of people have. Have heard about or read about in. In great detail. So, like, I. I get wanting to keep following the perspective that you started with, but I also. Yeah, like, obviously the book is this way because Atsuka wanted to do a. A specific kind of thing, and then. And then she did it, you know.

[Craig]

Well, and she's doing it in the context of her prior novel, that is.

[Andrew]

At an intermediate camp.

[Craig]

So, like, you can. If you don't know that reading this, you might go, oh, why is she cutting off here? This would be an interesting device to talk about that experience. And instead Atsuka is like, well, I wrote you can go read that book.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

So. Well, I'm glad you had a good read, Andrew.

[Andrew]

Yeah. I mean, like, good.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

You had a read for different reads. I had to read that the author wanted me to have.

[Craig]

Yeah, sure. That's a good way to think about it.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

Well, cool. It's weird. Had a good time podcasting, I think.

[Andrew]

We did, you and me, the collective. The first person plural.

[Craig]

Yes. And did you. You didn't find the, like, repetition stuff frustrating or.

[Andrew]

No, it's. It's such a short book and it's so clear the reason why it's told that way that it didn't even occur to me to be irritated by it.

[Craig]

I didn't really care for the three star Goodreads reviews that I found that I. I didn't ask you to prep for them because, like, I mean, I have the guitar.

[Andrew]

But if you're. If you're not going to read them.

[Craig]

And then I won't. No, don't worry about it.

[Andrew]

3 Star Goods reviews just like, oh, it's so repetitive.

[Craig]

Some of them were, oh, it's so repetitive. One of them was like, I loved her other book, but this is too repetitive. One of them can you format the.

[Andrew]

3 Star Goodreads reviews in a way that sort of creates an overall impression of what the people thought, but also kind of represents different individual viewpoints within the context of the collective? Can you do that for me?

[Craig]

One of them did write that one, which I. But I like it felt like it was based on what I was like getting excited about for the episode. I was like, I disagree with this review and I haven't even read the book so I'm not gonna give it air time. I'm not interested in it.

[Andrew]

But, well, the guitar will say on the floor.

[Craig]

But one did say that they like. Generally people were like, I like this author. I'm just not down with this device which is, you know, whatever, fine. That's the book. Have fun.

[Andrew]

That's the book, baby.

[Craig]

Thanks for reading this book and tell me about it, Andrew. I appreciate it.

[Andrew]

Thanks for listening to me tell you about it.

[Craig]

Yeah, of course. And thanks for telling me about what it's like to be 39. I'm looking forward to something.

[Andrew]

I got a few months of it under my belt. You have the, you'll have the 39 that you have though. Don't. Don't let my experience.

[Craig]

That's a good way off.

[Andrew]

Yeah. Put you off of anything.

[Craig]

Well, if you out there in the world have ever been 39 and you want to tell me what I'm in store for, send me an email. Overdue podmail.com Send me your impressions of 39 year olds. Are they cool? Can I be cool like them? Let me know. I'd love to hear about it. Find us also on social media at Overdue Pod bluesky and Instagram is where we spend most of our time. Thanks to Nick Lauren just who composed our theme music. Andrew. If folks want to know more about the show, where do they go?

[Andrew]

Overdue Podcast.com is the Internet website where you find the schedule for the month that we are in. Currently, that is September, but it's about to be Spooktober, baby. Our spooky month of spooky books. The schedule's not set yet, but it's gonna get set. It's close, but in. In the uncertainty. The spookiest thing of all really, when you truly. The books that we have are the ones we were going to read. All the episodes of the show, a little web player, a bunch of links to the stuff that Craig just said all up@overdue podcast.com. the other URL you should know about is patreon.com overduepo. That is our Patreon page. You can support the show financially directly. You buy us books, you buy us equipment, you buy us hosting, you buy the little Discord boost thing that we buy every month so that everybody in the Discord can use a little custom Garfield emoji.

[Craig]

It's very important. Thank you for.

[Andrew]

Super important for our Garfield based culture that we be able to have those custom emojis. So again, patreon.com overepod you will get episodes of our long read project, the Silly Marillion. You'll get access to that discord that I just mentioned. You'll get access to other things that we may or may not have been putting off recording for a couple of weeks because we've been busy. It's just despicable how long it's been since we. Since we watched the thing that we're going to talk about next.

[Craig]

I agree.

[Andrew]

Yes. So, patreon.com, craig, what are you reading next week? Speaking of gutter racism?

[Craig]

The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling.

[Andrew]

Okay, can't wait, everybody. Bare necessities. That's what we're going to be bringing to next week's show.

[Craig]

I want to be like you, Andrew.

[Andrew]

Oh, thanks, 39. All right, everybody, until we talk to you next time, please try to be happy. That was a Headgum podcast.