I felt extremely humbled and honoured to have the privilege to explore Joy Kogawa’s primary documents from our Rare Book and Special Collections. Amidst all the documents, I took a much closer look at the rejection letters Mrs. Kogawa had received from editor companies for her publication requests. Common reoccurring critiques from editing organizations included: not giving the “hardship [of the characters]…enough depth”, being far too poetic, and the problems the organization would face with marketing. Doubleday Canada specifies that Kogawa’s story would be difficult to publish due to conflicting interests, which I have concluded include the Canadian government, Japanese-Canadians, and the rest of society. This reveals the ultimate reason why so many companies are rejecting Mrs. Kogawa’s drafts. There is controversy tied in with giving Mrs. Kogawa permission to offer the world her perspective and experiences for the following reasons – the government wanting to maintain a clean reputation, the fear of the Japanese-Canadians for exposing the traumatic events, and majority of society denying the past or not taking it seriously. Moreover, I would like to note that I discovered that the second document I analyzed possessed a rather pretentious tone towards Mrs. Kogawa. In the opening, they used an informal greeting by just stating her first name. Furthermore, McClelland and Stewart Limited explicitly states how Mrs. Kogawa’s work is simply not adequate enough for their company’s top-notch standards for “high profile, high volume titles”. From my observations, all of the companies had apologized for their late responses, which adds to the implication that they did not wish to associate with Mrs. Kogawa at all. It was not a question of her writing, but her identity. As Dr. Luger addressed in the previous lecture, this situation parallels Naomi as well as the other Japanese-Canadians in Obasan being unsure of who they were, like how Steven laments, “is a riddle”. (Insert citation) Despite the fact that Mrs. Kogawa is indeed Canadian, because of the pigment of her skin, she was labelled as a “Jap” and receives different treatment than “authentic Canadians”. In Joy Kogawa’s attempt to publish novels, she is trying to preserve trauma from historic events, and addressing the significance of remembrance. Like Satrapi, Joy Kogawa is taking on an activist role to shed light on and bring attention to the mistreatment of Japanese-Canadians in the past. This action also connects to the relationship between the private versus public sphere. Naomi, or Kogawa is taking her private experiences, and publicizing them through writing memoirs. After the visit I paid to the Kogawa Fonds and critically analyzing the artifacts, I was able to get a sense of realness to what I knew already the novel was conveying, which made Obasan all the more powerful as a piece of literature safeguarding important history for society.