Uchida, Yoshiko. Picture Bride: A Novel. Seattle, WA: U of Washington, 1997 222pp $17.68 In her perspicuous fictional narrative, Picture Bride, distinguished author, Yoshiko Uchida, expatiates on the life of a woman whose fate was shifted by ineluctable circumstances and also limns the resilience that allowed the woman to persevere through them. Love and loss are entwined deeply into the story to epitomize the human nature behind a woman who, like others, was belittled off the basis of being Japanese. Through the perspective of this woman, Uchida incorporates picturesque diction and allegory whilst instilling a tranquil pacific mood with her audience to limn the sentiments of Japanese-Americans who’ve been oppressed and treated as inferior, …show more content…
The Executive Order 9066, signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, authorized for land to be established as military zones for the deportation of Japanese Americans into internment camps. The deportation of Japanese Americans was a pusillanimous act ridden by the fear that Japanese American people would act a saboteurs for the Japanese government. Without concrete evidence, innocent lives were led astray solely because of their Japanese ancestry. Japanese Americans were surmised as still remaining undeniably loyal to their ancestral home instead of America, despite that many Japanese Americans were still regarded as “aliens” in the first place. The federal government [at the time] claimed it was merely out of concern for America’s safety but it still cannot be denied that Japanese Americans were stripped of their constitutional rights without contrition or true reflection. The psychological impact imposed on those Japanese Americans while in the camps are often overlooked, disregarded, and/or muted. Apropos to this, authors such a Yoshiko Uchida, have written many texts to relay the emotions of those interned. Unlike many writers, Uchida first highlights the life Japanese Americans lived before being stripped of their