by Julie Otsuka
First published 2011
Young women from Japan clutch photographs of strangers who will become their husbands as their ship approaches San Francisco nearly a century ago. These picture brides face their first nights with men they have never met, then bend their backs in fruit orchards and scrub floors in white households. They wrestle with English words that feel foreign on their tongues while navigating an alien culture that views them with suspicion. As they bear children and watch those children grow ashamed of their Japanese heritage, the women find their carefully built lives threatened by the arrival of war. Otsuka follows this community of women through eight connected episodes that reveal how they endure displacement, labor, motherhood, and the pain of raising children who reject the very culture that shaped their mothers.
Genres: american-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, asian-american
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: fish-out-of-water, found-family
Setting: San Francisco
Period: 20th-century
144 pages · Hardcover · Knopf
Content warnings: racism