Obasan
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| Obasan | |
| Author | Joy Kogawa |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | not stated (first edition, hardcover), Hal Roth (Anchor Books edition) |
| Country | Canada |
| Language | English |
| Subject(s) | Asian Studies |
| Genre(s) | Novel |
| Publisher | Lester & Orpen Dennys (First edition, hardcover), Penguin Canada (Canadian paperback edition), Anchor Books (American paperback edition) |
| Publication date | 1981 |
| Published in English |
1981 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover, Paperback) |
| Pages | 250 (First edition, hardcover), 300 (Anchor Books edition) |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-919630-42-1 (First edition, hardcover), ISBN 0-14-305502-X (Penguin Canada paperback edition), ISBN 0-385-46886-5 (Anchor Books edition) |
| Preceded by | Jericho Road |
| Followed by | Woman in the Woods |
Obasan is a novel by the Japanese-Canadian author Joy Kogawa. First published by Lester and Orpen Dennys in 1981, it chronicles Canada's internment and persecution of its citizens of Japanese descent during World War II from the perspective of a young child. This book is often required reading for university English courses on Canadian Literature as well as in Ethnic Studies and Asian American Literature courses in the United States. In 2005, it was the One Book, One Vancouver selection.
Kogawa uses strong imagery of silence, stones and streams throughout the novel. Themes depicted in the novel include: memory and forgetting, prejudice and tolerance, identity, and justice versus injustice.
[edit] Plot
Sin 1972, Obasan centers on the memories and experiences of Naomi Nakane, a 36 year old schoolteacher living in the rural Canadian town of Cecil, Alberta, when the novel begins. The death of Naomi's uncle, with whom she had lived as a child, leads Naomi to visit and care for her widowed aunt Aya, whom she refers to as Obasan (Obasan being the Japanese word for "aunt"). Her brief stay with Obasan in turn becomes an occasion for Naomi to revisit and reconstruct in memory her painful experiences as a child during and after World War II, with the aid of a box of correspondence and journals sent to her by her Aunt Emily, detailing the years of the measures taken by the Canadian government against the Japanese citizens of Canada and their aftereffects.
Naomi's narration thus interweaves two stories, one of the past and another of the present, mixing experience and recollection, history and memory throughout. Naomi's struggle to come to terms with both past and present confusion and suffering form the core of the novel's plot.
