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Chapter 2
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Buddha in the Attic, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Gender and Autonomy
Racism, Assimilation, and Cultural Identity
Community and Inter-Asian Prejudice
The Power of Collectivism
Summary
Analysis
With their husbands, the young women travel across California, moving from labor camp to labor camp and working alongside their underpaid husbands in the fields. Together, they take on laborious tasks like digging up potatoes and picking tomatoes and grapes. Many of the women struggle to acclimate to their new lives, and some even die from heatstroke after working in the fields. Although the young women have many questions about their white bosses, their husbands warn them to stay away, be cautious and very polite to avoid trouble. The husbands, who speak English, try to fend for their wives when they fall ill, telling their bosses what’s wrong.
The novel uses “labor camp” to refer to the farms where the Japanese couples work; in this context, it doesn’t have the same connotation of imprisonment and forced labor as readers might expect—though the novel will go on to show how the bosses severely mistreat their Japanese employees. As the young women begin to settle into their new lives, it’s evident that their husbands have fully taken advantage of them—they don’t actually live the prosperous lives that they claimed to in their letters, and they certainly won’t be able to provide the young women with the beautiful American homes and gardens they promised. With some women even losing their lives due to difficult working conditions, it’s clear that the young women as a whole have little (if any) autonomy, as they’re not even free enough to look after their health in their new working environments. The difficulty of acclimating to a new culture also becomes clear; while the husbands have already learned English and can at least converse with their white bosses, the women have yet to grasp the English language and must rely on their husbands to communicate for them.
Themes
Many of the young women work hard to impress their bosses, sometimes because they want to prove that they can be as skilled as their husbands, because they grew up doing similar work, or because they fear being sent home. In turn, the white bosses begin to admire the young women for their skill in the fields, their discipline, and their “docile dispositions.” On the whole, the white bosses find Japanese workers easier to work with than their Chinese, Filipino, Korean, Mexican, and other workers—in part because they feel that Japanese workers don’t need to be taken care of.
Here, the harsh working conditions that the young women face in labor camps stand in the way of community: the young women compete against their husbands and one another to prove they’re worthy enough to not be sent home, and the white bosses pit their workers against one another. While the Japanese women and their husbands may benefit from being their bosses’ favorites, they’re also favored due to uninformed, racist ideas, with their bosses believing that Japanese people don’t complain and don’t need to eat as much as other ethnicities.
Themes
On Sundays, the young women and their husbands are permitted to rest, so the young women write home and tell their mothers about the pains of their new lives and how their husbands’ photographs and letters were false. Sometimes, male figures—their bosses, white American men, or even their husbands’ Japanese friends—offer the young women money or gifts for sexual favors, and sometimes, they agree because they need the help or are dissatisfied with their husbands, who like to gamble and stay out late.
Several factors endanger the young women’s autonomy from every direction: not only do the women experience sexual violence within their marriages, but every male presence in their new lives now poses a threat. With some women agreeing to provide sexual favors in exchange for money or gifts, it’s clear that they feel like this is their only option to make their lives a bit better—though they likely have little to no control over their own earnings. Although the women may not reveal the entire depth of their struggles to their mothers back home, female community certainly serves an important purpose to their well-beings.
Themes
Although the conditions are difficult, the young women do their best to adjust to their new lives, decorating their small homes, making altars, and walking to town to buy themselves small gifts at the end of successful harvest seasons. What remains difficult, however, is that white townsfolk do not want Japanese neighbors, sometimes driving by to harass them with fire or dynamite. As the abuse mounts, the young women find their husbands changed by the constant fear, and they themselves begin to develop callous outer shells to get by.
Despite the multitude of ways that American and Japanese American society threatens the young women’s autonomy, the women remain resilient, rather than simply becoming victims of their circumstances. The violence of the racism that the Japanese American community faces, however, is striking and counterintuitive: although white bosses favor their Japanese workers, white American society still resists the presence of non-white immigrants to the point of violence.
Themes
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Some of the young women and their husbands are able to move to the suburbs, where the women work as maids and caretakers. Like their white bosses in the fields, the white women who hire the Japanese women find them more hardworking than women of other ethnicities, and some of the white women begin to confide in the Japanese workers and trust them with their emotional concerns. Some white women call for their Japanese workers when they can’t sleep, when they’re sad, and when they feel ugly. Despite this vulnerability, there’s still a range in how the white women treat their Japanese workers: some fire them for seemingly no reason, and some leave them fortunes after they pass away. For the most part, the Japanese women remain in the background and try to do their jobs well.
The peculiar and counterintuitive attitudes that white bosses have toward Japanese people continue even as some of the Japanese women and their husbands make it out of the agricultural sector. While there are some aspects of this boss-employee relationship that are less damaging, the fact that the white women bosses often treat their Japanese employees with little care or respect demonstrates that they don’t view Japanese people as equals. In other words, white American racism prevents the Japanese American community from finding a true home in the United States.
Themes
The white men of the households that the Japanese women work for sometimes lead them to the bedroom, wanting to have sex and often asking the women to speak Japanese in bed and wear their finest silk kimonos. As some of the young women find themselves pregnant, in love, or wanting to confess their infidelity to their husbands, they grow more isolated than ever, often receiving violent punishment from their husbands or families. But one woman escapes the American brothel she works at by marrying a white man who gives her a cushy life of riches—though she can’t help but think of the Japanese husband she left behind.
Here, white American racism toward Japanese people takes on yet another form. While the white American men may be genuinely attracted to the Japanese women, they also fetishize and exoticize them in the bedroom, further demonstrating how they’re unable to view them as equals—only as exotic objects. Additionally, even as time passes and the Japanese American community grows more accustomed to living in the United States, one thing that doesn’t change is that the women remain disproportionately disempowered and isolated. Although the Japanese husbands may engage in their own acts of infidelity, it’s the women who seem to suffer the most violence, isolation, and regret—even when they do manage to escape their situations.
Themes
Many of the women stay predominantly in J-Town, where Japanese people are in the majority, and they’re able to buy Japanese groceries and clothing and enjoy community with fellow Japanese women. When they leave J-Town, after all, the white townsfolk make fun of them, throw stones, and treat them as inferior. Because of this, the women dream of leaving America for other countries where they might live more prosperous lives or of returning home to Japan. In some cases, they manage to go home.
Japanese American communities grow more established despite white Americans refusing to treat them as equals, and surrounded by fellow Japanese women, the young women are able to experience some level of camaraderie with one another. However, the dreams that the young women once thought would come true in the United States have disappeared: many women now dream of leaving the very country they once looked forward to living in.
Themes
