Writing Against the Silence: Joy Kogawa's Obasan

Bruce Meyer teaches English at Trinity College, University of Toronto.

Joy Kogawa’s Obasan takes as its central themes the issue of silence
(Canada’s third but unofficial language), and the matter of breaking
cultural, historical, and personal silences in order to redress the
injustices of the past. The reality of the Canadian internment of
Japanese-Canadian citizens, Aunt Emily’s assemblage of facts,
Naomi’s decision to tell her own story based on those facts, and the
muted intonations of experience and myth-making expressed through the
character of Naomi’s mother form the basis for this poignant study in
the purpose of storytelling.

This is a fine study of a rich and fascinating novel. Davidson has had
much to cope with in a short space: Kogawa’s use of various levels of
narrative (personal, communal, national) and the means by which those
narratives are conveyed. This study, however, is successful in that it
makes an excellent companion to the novel. It is thorough, detailed, and
sensitive to the original text. If there is a weakness it lies in the
fact that Davidson has not fully contextualized Obasan. The Slocan
sections in the original work borrow from earlier Western writers such
as O’Hagan (in Tay John). One of Kogawa’s intentions in writing
Obasan was to contextualize the internment in the broader scope of the
Canadian literary experience, a textual convenience that adds poignancy
to Kogawa’s intentions and enlarges the claim for Obasan’s rightful
place in the Canadian canon.