Last week our ASTU class was able to visit the Rare Books library to look deeper into the process that Joy Kogawa went through while writing her book, Obasan. I found this experience very intriguing because when I read a book I don’t really think about all the work that went into producing it, when I was able to look at notes and edits of the rough drafts I realized writing this book was no easy process. Through the research, edits and finding a company to produce her book, Joy Kogawa was able to leave her mark on Canadian history.

While looking through some of the boxes the library had of Joy Kogawa and her notes, I realized that in order to write this book she had to do a lot of research. There was a couple versions of family trees which I found very interesting because they were slightly different. On one tree it had Joy’s mothers name and some other names which were slightly different than referred to in the book. I felt the trees offered some insight to the book, especially regarding Joy’s mother because she is left as a mystery at the end of the book and we, as the audience, are left with questions about who she really was. I also enjoyed reading some of the fan mail Joy received for writing the book and the praise she got for being so brave to do so. One fan letter that stood out me was from Renata, a younger girl who asked Joy for help on her paper she was writing about Obasan. Even though we couldn’t see the letter Joy wrote back we could assume she helped Renata because there was another letter from her thanking Joy for her help.

Research into the family history and fan mail wasn’t the only documents which the library contained, they also had pages and pages of drafts and edits from different people commenting on Joy’s book before it was published. There was some nice comments and then some pretty harsh ones as well. At some points in her drafts, parts were cut out and were marked as boring, annoying and unnecessary, while other editors had more grammatical notes rather than trying to change the story. There was also parts which were left out of the final edit such as when Obasan moves around Canada, it would be interesting to see how much of the edits were left out of the finished book. Another document which was fascinating was a page with the possible titles for the book. The options were entered around the idea of family heritage, seeing and remembering. My question was, if the book was titled differently if it would change the way we read the book?

The library also contained numerous letters from publishers which turned the book down. Many of the responses stated that if they did publish this book they would receive a great deal of bad press, therefore, they didn’t want the book to give them a bad name. Others took a bit harsher of an approach and stated that the book was silly and such a book would never get published because the whole idea and basis of it was irrelevant.

Joy Kogawa took a chance in writing this book and had to over come many setbacks including rejection letters from publishers and mean and aggressive comments on her drafts, however, the benefit to herself, her family and society will be forever remembered, not just through her book, but through the documents and letters which the Fonds were able to obtain and preserve for the future.