The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka

This slender book is easy to pick up and hold in one hand — very convenient for bedtime reading! It’s a collection of stories of women who immigrated from Japan to the United States in the 1900s. The book’s first-person plural perspective made the content feel a little distant, but I’m glad I kept reading it. (Another novel by the same author, When the Emperor Was Divine, was much more my style.) Despite all of the literature I’ve read about the Japanese-American experience, this book still offered new insights.

Get it: 

Borrow The Buddha in the Attic from the library. I also recommend When the Emporer Was Divine by the same author.

Otsuka, Julie. 2011. The Buddha in the Attic. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.