Ventriloquizing subalternity : towards narrating a revisionist counter-memory in Julie Otsuka's the buddha in the attic (2011)‎

Abstract EN

This paper scrutinizes the female consciousness in Julie Otsuka‟s The Buddha in the attic by positioning the novel amidst the mechanisms of, Postcolonial subaltern historiography‟.

it is argued that Otsuka redresses the representational imbalance of the Japanese-American, picture brides‟ by advancing a scathing assessment and rewriting of American history through a counter-discourse of literary genesis.

defying the oversimplification of macro-histories and the omission of the female voice, Otsuka unearths the psychic subtexts that lie within and beneath the historical facts of these Japanese-American females and presents forth, a revisionist history of affect‟.

the latter discloses their gender-specific suffering, animating their feelings and how they experienced their private history, both psychologically and corporeally.

this article equally probes Otsuka‟s devices for such reclamation, especially her choice of the palimpsestic, we‟ voice, which enabled her to render the private historical memory a communal account.