Buddha Case

As the roles of women continue to evolve every century, their general purpose pretty much stays the same. In Buddha in the attic which takes place in China in the 1900's women were desired as pretty much servants and child bearers. The story in Buddha in the attic it gives a breathless account of the women's hopes and fears and the hard-working lives for which they settled. Each book explains the lives of hard working women with different challenges, heartaches but living in different parts of the centuries. The similarity between the two stories shows both groups of women going through different challenges but both traveling uncharted waters.

In Buddha in the attic the Japanese did not know what they were getting into when they were traveling to America. Little did they know they were going to have to work very hard every day to get what they wanted out of America. "We forgot about Buddha. We forgot about God…We developed a coldness inside of us that still has not thawed. We stopped writing to our mothers. We lost weight and grew thin. We stopped bleeding. We stopped dreaming. We stopped wanting. We simply worked. That was all." However in You know when the men are gone they knew what military life was like but they didn't know of the new challenges they would face in a different state.

In both of the novels they tell stories of women's lives and how they survive. But they describes them differently. In The Buddha in the Attic, Otsuka uses a very different style. She tells the story in a "we" plural narrative. She never focuses on a single woman. She doesn't give them names. They are like many of us see them--an immigrant group, different from one another. Yet, at the same time, she tells their individual stories in America and then their common fate as the country rounds them up and sends them to internment camps during the war. However in the novel you know when the men are gone Fallon tells individuals