Obasan, often categorized as a work of historical fiction, is a book that is rooted in a specific, pressing matter that is important to Kogawa and her community. While literature students are no stranger to books that revolve around serious themes relevant to reality – like “The Great Gatsby” and “1984” that serve as social commentaries and critiques of human nature – Obasan is unique because it is linked to the specific political action of addressing past and present racism in Canada. This can be seen in the very last part of the book, which is an excerpt from a 1946 letter written by the Co-operative Committee on Japanese Canadians. The entire book voices out against racism in the system and in the community, and seeks to incite action to address this issue, which was unlike any book I know.
When I was reading the book, I could not fully grasp how pressing and relevant the book’s themes were to Canadian society at that point in time. As engaging as it was, there was an imaginative distance between the issues raised in the book and what I understood. It was only during the trip to the Kogawa Fonds that I began to better understand how much gravity the book held as a reflection of society and personal trauma. My group was assigned to a folder containing letters from readers of Obasan, so I was able to read several readers’ direct responses. The writers of a few of these letters expressed how the novel evoked deep introspection and emotional response while they were reading it. Another group read a series of newspaper clippings written in response to the book. The amount of responses generated by the book is a testament to its relevance and weight in the community at that time. The letters to the people in power in the political arena at that time, including the then-prime minister Pierre Trudeau, gave further political weight to the book, for we can see how Kogawa was actively trying to address systemic racism and allow Canada to face its own history. Overall, the field trip made me view the book as part of a larger movement for acceptance of diversity, instead of a singular novel.
Seeing these fan letters, rejection letters from publishers and letters to people of political standing helped me better understand Kogawa beyond her position as an author – she was also a determined activist with initiative, and much more. I believe that books are means of communication, with authors wording their message on paper and ink and the recipients of these messages free to interpret the message for ourselves. However, readers do not often imagine who the author is behind the veil of the book – we do not have much to get to know the author by. Seeing the Fonds – the writing drafts, the letters to people of political importance and so on – really helped me better construct an image of Kogawa as the person behind the novel.
Ultimately, the books and the impact they generate influence the author as well, and sometimes in painful ways. Seeing Kogawa receive responses to her book and take action in her community reminded me of Iris Chang, the writer of “The Rape of Nanking”, a non-fiction book about the Nanking massacre of 1937. Iris Chang, whose grandparents were directly affected by the massacre, committed suicide at the age of 37. Her suicide is suspected to be connected to the traumatic effect the historical accounts of the massacre had on her, as well as a growing paranoia that politicians ordered constant surveillance on her. An article written by a close friend of Chang’s, Paula Kamen, states:
“In her last call to Kamen, Chang had alluded to highly placed people who didn’t like her once again digging into Japanese atrocities during World War II.”
“[The book] had been denounced by the Japanese ambassador to the U.S., and caricatures of Chang appeared in right-wing Japanese newspapers.”
Both Iris Chang and Kogawa sought to address less well-known atrocities committed in the past. Unfortunately, sometimes the act of unearthing traumatic moments in the past can prove detrimental to those determined to speak about it, especially if the people in power wish for that past to remain buried. Kogawa’s and Chang’s actions are admirable to me because they require no small amount of bravery and grit in the name of exhuming a traumatic past that others wish to be silenced.