Hey guys!
So the last few weeks have been really busy for all of us. Papers due, final exams stress and lots of works but we have also gotten the chance to experience different activities like the planned field trip for our ATU class.
The feeling I got from some of my classmates and myself included is that a field trip to the University Archives probably does not sound like a lot of fun, at least it didn’t to me. But the general feeling after the visit was completely different judging from the content posted on our blogs last week.
I personally think that getting an insight if the archives from the Rare Books and Special Collections in the Irving K. Barber Library was unexpectedly interesting and fun. Kennedy mentions that for him it was like “stepping into a time capsule…an organized time capsule” and for Olivea looking at one of the files on Kogawa’s fond was “filled with beautiful hand written letters from the 1980’s.”
To see so many original documents, letters of rejection, newspapers, personal notes, drawings and pictures sent to Joy Kogawa was really interesting. Exploring the contents of the fond was surprising to me and many others. One of the most unexpected articles found in the fond was a letter sent by an elementary school student to Kogawa saying ““Dear Mrs. Kogawa, I did not realy like the book because nothing realy happend in it. Your friend Joel.” which included drawing of a house, what seems to be the flag of the UK and a girl floating around. Go check out the drawing at Ryan’s blog.
The fact that our visit was guided by librarian Chelsea Shriver I think made my experience as interesting as it was. She made the whole thing so interesting explaining how the documents are collected and how they are organized to be kept at UBC.
Being able to access all of the primary sources like several drafts to Kogawa’s novel Obasan was like being witness to the process of the making of Kogawa’s work. She even included a title page, as mentioned in Magda’s blog, where she gave her novel the title “If I must Remember”.
Inneke says in her blog that going to the archives and exploring all of the content used in the writing of Obasan had her like “Wow.. this is what the book that I read supposed to be like..” That was exactly how I felt, the overall experience of visiting that section of the library was surprising and very intriguing.
Hey Gabriel!
I’m quite surprised that you and our classmates didn’t really think that the field trip is going to be fun at first, I guess I’m the only one who was already excited to have a field trip and having a “no lecture” class from the beginning! But it’s good that you changed your mind after seeing the collections and had the same feeling as me. I totally agree on what Kennedy said about the archive collections of Joy’s Kagawa book titled Obasan, it’s like stepping into an organized time capsule because it has everything that capture the process of writing Obasan from the beginning like the resources she used till the very end like letters from the readers! It was very interesting indeed!
-Inneke Soeyanto
Hi Gabriel!
I kind of like how most of the class came into the field trip without many expectations. I found that it was even better to go in and be really pleasantly surprised! I also agree with your point that Chelsea Shriver made the whole experience even better. She was so fun and bubbly, and she seemed very passionate and knowledgable.
I absolutely love the letter you quoted! I didn’t come across it in the archives, so i’m excited that you linked Ryan’s blog so I can go check it out! The handwritten letters were my absolute favorite part. I didn’t expect to archives to hold these kinds of things. I was expecting it to be all “official” documents.
-Olivea
Hey Gabriel!
I definitely agree with you on the point that most of us went into the archives not expecting much. I do have to say that it made the trip all the better though. I think that what made the experience so great was because of Chelsea though. Like Olivea said, her bubbliness and passion about the knowledge really made a difference. The written letters were my favourite part of the trip. I found that the letters that I liked best though were the ones written by the children. You could not read them without having a smile on your face.
Hey all,
I love how much discussion is going on about the letters that were found in the archive. I definitely agree that the most enjoyable letters were the ones written by the children. They seem to bring to life the whole idea of the archives and add a true personality to the whole process of Obasan. It is fascinating to see how kids stumble over words that we take for granted, especially in contrast with how Joy Kogawa strings them together with such poetic precision. To quote a great wizard, “Words are, in my not-so-humble opinion, our most inexhaustible source of magic. capable of both inflicting injury, and remedying it” (Dumbledore).