The Buddha in the Attic
I’m sure you know about author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s wildly popular 2009 TED Talk “The Danger of a Single Story.” If you don’t, though, click here to hear how she delineates her experience grappling with what others assumed about her, a Nigerian, and also how she herself would fall prey to this idea that other groups of people are a “certain way.” It’s a very precise and very specific exploration of stereotype. Unfortunately — and this has nothing to do with her TED Talk — I also feel this desire to dismantle stereotype sometimes devolves into things people roll their eyes at, such as the simplistic phrase “this is my truth.” (Basically, contemporary internet culture has ruined a lot of subtlety as things become meme-ified, etc…)
I checked out The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka because Rebecca Makkai recommended it when the NYT did its whole Best Books of the First Quarter of the Century bonanza a few months ago. You can swipe her blurb/endorsement below.
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I’m not a philosopher, although I certainly like to play one on Instagram. All I know about the concept of particular v general/universal is the obvious take-away — that there are some universal experiences, but that within those, many particular experiences exist. (Wow, shocking!) But that is kind of the idea behind the “single story” narrative. And it is also how The Buddha in the Attic — a short novel about pre-World War II Japanese picture brides, their experiences acclimating to America, and then their forced movement to internment camps — is structured. The narrators are numerous, all anonymous but with individualized and specific experiences.
The Buddha in the Attic is a perfect complement to “The Danger of a Single Story.” (And actually, it was published just two years after Adichie’s talk.) It’s also a good reminder “…that some people are born luckier than others and that things in this world do not always go as you plan.” (A platitude that can puncture both a particular and a general narrative.)
originally published on instagram