Picture Bride | Literary Criticism & Book Review

Picture Bride Critical Overview

Picture Bride has not drawn much critical attention. Uchida is best remembered for her children’s books, which often contain similar subject matter as her one adult novel, which is the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. Uchida’s work is often credited with giving visibility to Japanese American internment.

In “Prejudice and Pride: Japanese Americans in the Young Adult Novels of Yoshiko Uchida,” Danton McDiffett comments on themes that run through most of Uchida’s books, including her Picture Bride. McDiffett writes that Uchida, an American citizen who experienced the hardships of a Japanese-American internment camp, writes about “the prejudice against Japanese Americans, even before the attack on Pearl Harbor electrified opinion against them.” Her books, McDiffett states, “continue to show the upheaval, sorrow, confusion, and anger spawned by the American government’s undeniably racist actions.” “Yoshiko Uchida’s novels,” McDiffett concludes, “provide well-written, interesting, and historically accurate accounts of a...
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