Collective Memory，Living History：We-Narrative in Julia Otsuka’s The Buddha in the Attic

Abstract

The last two decades have witnessed increasing interest in social minds and collective narrative. The first person plural form is frequently employed by women writers and African-America writers to endow the marginalized groups with voices. This article approaches Julie Otsuka’s historical novel The Buddha in the Attic(2011) in this context. One of the most striking features of The Buddha in the Attic is its we-narrative. Yet its power is undervalued in the earlier reviews. This article argues that we-narrative in The Buddha in the Attic is an especially effective narrative technique to express the collective minds of the marginalized and muted Japanese “picture brides” and gives them long overdue voices to articulate their hidden and forgotten life stories.