#obasan

Let me tell you about the novel Obasan. Written by Joy Kogawa and inspired by her own experiences, Obasan is about the internment of Japanese Canadians between 1942-49 following the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. Their lands and properties were seized in British Columbia, families were separated, and over 22,000 Japanese Canadians were displaced.

Obasan was written in 1981 and it was the first to properly tell the story from a Japanese Canadian perspective. It's been a few years since I read it but I do remember that it dealt with the trauma of extraction and relocation, the witnessing of trauma, and generational trauma.

It won the 1981 Books in Canada First Novel Award, then the Canadian Authors' Association 1982 Book of the Year Award, and then was reprinted in paperback by Penguin Books in 1983.

My professor told me it was the only fictional novel ever referenced and quoted in Canada's House of Commons. The book's success and impact of Obasan has been directly linked to the 1988 apology by then-Prime Minister Brian Mulroney for the internment.

Or I saw a TikTok that mentioned that the episode Kurt Hummel comes out as gay first aired in 2009 and that Glee became a fucking sensation. Gay marriage gets legalized in 2015.

Books and other media can directly influence governments. If they're trying to ban books it's because they have the power to change things.

~ done with sangati. came back after a long day. will finish obasan [joy kogawa] by tonight. assessment preparations are on wait for the moment.

The photo is from a few weeks ago, but I finished reading Obasan by Joy Kogawa yesterday. Wonderfully written in passages that alternate between lyrical (that is, somewhat fragmented, poetic, and image-driven) and straightforward (in the form of found documents), this was as searing as the blurbs on the front and back cover promised the book to be. I can see how this novel has a sequel, though I feel like it's not as well-known as Obasan.