It’s the final week of One Book, One Philadelphia, and we couldn’t be more excited to be welcoming Julie Otsuka for the Grand Finale celebration on Wednesday, March 13 at 7:30 p.m. at the Parkway Central Library. Don’t miss your chance to meet the author of The Buddha in the Attic and ask her any questions you may have about her wonderful novel!

The final section of the book—“A Disappearance”—features a shift in perspective from the collective voice of the Japanese women to the collective voice of their white American neighbors. This masterful shift sends the message that, now interned in camps, the Japanese women no longer have a public voice. And the neighbors who for so long took them for granted, looked down on them, or looked right through them have to now grapple with the loss of an entire community of people that enriched their lives in more ways than they once realized or acknowledged. The book left me thinking: Can a community of people ever really “disappear”? And what must it have felt like for the Japanese Americans to return to their communities after they were released from the camps?

What did you take away from “A Disappearance”? Share your thoughts in the comments! And don’t miss Wednesday’s Grand Finale!

Tags: One Book 2013, One Book One Philadelphia

Welcome to “Chatting One Book,” week seven! Just two weeks are left of One Book, One Philadelphia, and we’d love for you to share on Facebook or Twitter (or in the comments below) what your favorite One Book program has been this season.

This week, we’re discussing “Last Day,” the section that describes the women’s experiences as they are forced to leave home and are deported to internment camps after the outbreak of World War II. Something that immediately stood out to me was that, unlike other sections of the book, this one was written as one long paragraph, rather than several shorter ones. Why do you think Julie Otsuka chose to structure the section in this manner? I found the experience of reading “Last Day” to be a little intense and overwhelming, with no breaks in the text and no chance to catch my breath or pause and think. In a way, I think the experience of reading such a large block of text mirrors for the reader how the experience of deportation might have felt for the women—overwhelming.

What did you take away from “Last Day”? Share your thoughts in the comments!

Tags: One Book 2013, One Book One Philadelphia

Welcome back to “Chatting One Book”! This week, we’re focusing on the section called “Traitors.”

In “Traitors,” I thought Julie Otsuka did an especially fine job of creating a tense atmosphere through language and setting. As rumors build about Japanese Americans being taken away from their lives and livelihoods to camps far away in the desert, the women live in a constant state of fear and apprehension. Otsuka describes the heavy rain, the cold wind, and the dust clouds that began to envelop their neighborhoods, which serves to mirror the atmosphere in the community—oppressed by anxiety, chilled with fear, unable to “see” what is going on—closed off from everyone. These smaller details really serve to enrich and enhance the story, and as a reader, I too felt myself tensing up as I read this section.

What did you take away from “Traitors”? Share your thoughts in the comments!

Tags: One Book 2013, One Book One Philadelphia

“The Children” is perhaps my favorite section of The Buddha in the Attic, if one can have a favorite part of this wholly enveloping novel. I love how Julie Otsuka describes the development of the women’s children, from toddlers playing in the fruit fields while their parents worked to young students, stuck in the back of the classroom with the handmade or hand-me-down clothes, sticking out like sore thumbs. I thought the last passage of the section was especially poignant. Despite all evidence in their lives pointing to the contrary, the children dreamed of achieving greatness, and their mothers allowed them to keep dreaming, although they sensed upcoming trouble and hardship.  I believe that having dreams and hope in the face of adversity is a powerful thing, and for the women to allow their children the freedom to daydream was to allow them the freedom to hope for the future. Without hope for a better future, what’s the point of getting through a not-so-great today?

What did you take away from “The Children”? Share your thoughts in the comments!

Tags: One Book 2013, One Book One Philadelphia

We’re halfway through the 2013 One Book, One Philadelphia season! How many events have you made it to so far?

This week’s edition of “Chatting One Book” focuses on the section “Babies.” Like “First Night,” this is also a very short section, juxtaposed against the longer section preceding it. Also like “First Night,” the section describes an intimate, physical experience—in this case, birth. Why do you think Julie Otsuka chose to keep these two sections deliberately short? To me, it seems like their brevity almost mirrors the way in which we often experience moments like these. Not to say that birth is a brief experience by any stretch, but in comparison to the day-in, day-out toil of daily life, intimate, physical moments often serve to punctuate the monotony of our routines.

What did you take away from “Babies”? Share your thoughts in the comments!

Tags: One Book 2013, One Book One Philadelphia