The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuko

Julie Otsuko, who wrote 'When the Emperor Was Devine', a book about a family interned during WWII, follows that book with this one. The Japanese American themes continue, although this one is more of a collage than a story. She tells the stories of picture brides, women who came from Japan to America, having seen only a picture of their intended husbands. The marriage was brokered by a middle man who had no hesitation about lying--the men were farm hands, rather than the professional men they were presented to the girls and their families as, and they wer older and coarser than what their supposed pictures revealed. Otsuko proceeds to tell us all the fates that befell these women. They fell in love on the boat, they were raped by their 'husbands', they were sold or stolen as prostitutes, they were shunned by their new communiteis, they labored in the fields--but rarely did they live the life they were trained for or promised. These are not happy stories, so maybe it is better to tell them as a whole rather than to dwell on the individual misery--and the book is moer of a novella, something you can sit down and read in an hour or two, so as to minimize the pain that each individiual woman endured. Nicely done and recommended.