Dear Readers,

Last week we went to the Rare Books and Special Collections Library in Irving K. Barber Learning Centre to take a look at the Kogawa Fonds. Fonds means “the whole of the records, regardless of form or medium, automatically and organically created and/or accumulated and used by a particular individual, family, or corporate body in the course of that creator’s activities and functions” as defined by the Trent University Library. The word is used in plural form because it is always an accumulation of many different documents. Kogawa Fonds are documents that Joy Kogawa has given to University of British Columbia and there are many different documents like letters, drafts and official records which show the process of “Obasan”.

While we were looking at the Kogawa Fonds, I saw the rejection letters that came from many publishers. I thought about how she wrote the book for a specific audience and not only for the sake of literary purposes. This book was written to be published because it has the purpose of educating Canadians about a specific event, the Japanese internment. In the rejection letters her storyline was found distanced from the reader and it was said that the reader wouldn’t be able to connect with the story or the characters. I think that her, writing with a purpose caused the characters to become much less important than what happened. The story didn’t let the reader connects with Naomi because she does not talk at all, she is only the character needed for this story telling. Creating perfect characters and a story line is not the purpose of the writer. She wants to write about the internment not about Naomi. Also the story moves inside Naomi’s head and we go into Naomi’s mind very fast in the book without getting to know her personally. This book is like a puzzle that needs solving and definitely not a book to read for just the sake of reading, this book needs to be read as an education tool over the literary aspect of it. The publishers also decided that the book won’t be sold because readers look for different characters, not dull characters like Naomi. The three publishers that denied to publish the book all thought that the characters were not clear, which made the story unclear.

A rejection letter from Oberon Press to Joy Kogawa from Kogawa Fonds at UBC Rare Books and Special Collections Library

It is very interesting to see how a writing is chosen to be published. When I think about “Obasan” in particular, this book had to be published to have an effect on society as Kogawa intended. She probably had to make sacrifices in her work for it to get published because that was the main goal. This book has educated many people in Canada about what happened during the internment. I think that Kogawa, writing to give a strong message about trauma and memory didn’t want to make the characters the main focus of this book instead of the theme of memory and coping with trauma, which confused the publishers because literature is used as an education tool in “Obasan”.