Readers are usually only able to understand an author through their text alone, and other means of discovering further knowledge about the author can be unavailable to many. Our ASTU class had the opportunity to visit the Joy Kogawa fonds after reading her book, Obasan, and the fonds gave us insight into the many details and aspects of Kogawa’s life and the making of Obasan.
The box of documents that I looked at contained a typed letter from Kogawa to the owners of the house that appears in her book. Since the house played an important role in her childhood, Kogawa asks if the owners would consider selling the house to her. She talks about her family and how her mother is very alone, and expresses hope to hear back from the owners of the house; the house would eventually be turned into a writer’s home. Although Dr. Luger touched on the history of this particular house in class, I would not have been able to see it as clearly in the larger picture of the story of Obasan without having gone to the fonds and found this document.
I also discovered a couple letters that Kogawa had written to an individual by the name of “Fred” in which she talked about her depression. A letter from January 13, no year, mostly described her thought process in the midst of her depression, and in it, Kogawa also expressed her doubts about her relations with her friends, among other subjects. Such highly personal documents could allow us to gain some understanding of the author herself and how she fits into the greater narrative surrounding Obasan, in which she played a central role.
In addition, there was a letter from a “JJ” to Kogawa in which “JJ” asked the author whether she was on drugs because, and I quote loosely, poets often sound as though they are on drugs. Such morsels of humor can further add to the mosaic that these important, one-of-a-kind documents create to further our understanding of Kogawa and Obasan.