During our class visit to the Rare Books and Special Collections (RBSC) branch of Irving K. Barber Library, we were allowed to pour over an astonishingly wide variety of documents that contributed to the final draft and publishing of Joy Kogawa’s Obasan. The nature of the documents varied greatly, from scribbled notes following Kogawa’s train of thought, to rejection letters from publishers, to typewritten drafts of certain chapters, to letters written from Kogawa to the Canadian prime minister – the list goes on. All of these documents contributed to a tangible way of viewing and understanding Kogawa’s process of writing Obasan, a documented journey that one could piece together (to a certain degree) on their own with the help of this collection.

The background of this process, provided by these documents, gives the book far more depth, in my opinion. However, as Dr. Luger mentioned in class recently, the advent of technology in providing us with easy-to-use word processors erases a lot of this process. Granted, it must make the editing process remarkably easier and perhaps speed up the writing process itself, but physical representations marking the author’s journey towards the final draft are lost. Current technology would likely erase in part another important aspect of Kogawa’s formulation of Obasan: physical documents of the past such as letters and telegrams. E-mails would likely replace a large portion of this correspondence, and its speed would likely change even the content of communication. With all that is erased by technology, library branches like the RBSC must be affected, and will continue to be affected, by the sheer lack of physical documents in circulation that detail an author’s process – especially in comparison to the impressive extent of Kogawa’s.

Although there’s little to be done about this trend, I find it a saddening in a way. This particular nature of documentation allows the reader to interact with the story to a further extent, and so much more goes into published product than is indicated by the final draft. It would be incredible to have a collection such as Kogawa’s to document processes of other books, like of Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis. It would conjure up even greater of an appreciation for the work, thought, and struggle that goes into the published product. There’s simply something about paper documents capable of being held that provides a level of intimacy and personal connection with the content.