Julie Otsuka

The story begins in California, where she was born and raised, and it is based on Otsuka's grandfather who was arrested as a suspected spy for Japan the day after Pearl Harbor.

Otsuka continued to write about her family's history and in 2011 published her second novel, The Buddha in the Attic, that takes place in the early 1900s, and it discusses the marriages of Japanese women who immigrated to the United States to marry men they knew only through photographs.

During this year, she also published a short story titled "Diem Perdidi," that translates to "I have lost the day," which dives into a more personal space as it is based on her mother who had frontotemporal dementia.

[1] This short story was the beginning of her third novel published in 2022 titled, The Swimmers, which further relates her experience as the daughter of a mother with frontotemporal dementia.

Although she did not live through World War II, her mother, uncle, and two grandparents did, giving Otsuka a personal perspective on the matter.

[16] The family was then held in a horse stall at the Tanforan Racetrack until they were subsequently transferred to the Topaz Internment Camp[17] near Delta, Utah.

Author Julie Otsuka has been given extensive critical acclaim for her donation to contemporary literature, which has been pronounced by a variety of reputable awards and recognitions that underline her storytelling and exploration of thought-provoking themes.

Acclaim surrounding this artist suggests that her work encompasses the complexities of belonging, identity, and memories in order to deliver literature featuring multicultural themes.

His scholarly article discusses Otsuka's work in When the Emperor Was Divine and how it has demonstrated the effects of the war and “embraces a perspective on post-traumatic suffering that emphasizes the potential for healing and recovery” (Gibbons 18).

Another author named Manuel Jobert's critical essay called "Odd Pronominal Narratives: The Singular Voice of the First-Person Plural in Julie Otsuka's The Buddha in the Attic", features many key ideas and how these ideas feature a “we” narrative, an experience shared by a group because we are all are being subjected to the same behavior and trauma collectively as a whole (Jobert 541).