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Chapter 1
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
After arriving in San Francisco, the young women spend their first nights with their new husbands, some in cheap motels and others in the best hotels that allow Japanese people to enter. Some of the men are gentle in the bedroom, believing their new wives to have never previously had sex, but many men are violent and rough and don’t stop even when the young women try to fight back. One man even enlists the help of the innkeeper and the innkeeper’s wife, who hold down the young woman to prevent her from escaping. Some of the men are clumsy and inexperienced, and a rare few give their new wives actual pleasure.
The ways in which the husbands treat the young women on their first nights together reveal just how much they prioritize their own desires over their wives’ wants, needs, and safety. Just as the husbands lied to the women about who exactly they were so that the women would marry them, they continue to disregard the women’s humanity, often acting with violence in order to coerce the women into having sex. Describing the women going through this ordeal individually but also as a group creates a chilling image of the now-fragmented community.
Themes
