The past few weeks in ASTU we have have been analyzing Willie van Peer’s “Literature, Imagination and Human Rights”. After completing Joy Kogawa’s novel, “Obasan” it is easy to draw comparisons between Willie van Peer’s idea that literature is capable of nurturing the type of imaginative thinking that enable people to make a change. “Obasan” was critical in the push towards getting the Government of Canada to issue a public apology to those affected in the internment camps put in place in World War II. Protests and rallies are capable of gaining support of those people already willing to move towards change. It is those who are not capable of imagining the change that need works like “Obasan” to assist them reach a new state of enlightened thinking in which they, too, are able to see the need for change. Van Peer describes this as the “dis-encapsulation” of society, in which we are able to move from the former state of mind to the latter by using literature. The need for political redressing is often not an easy task, especially when it entails the reflection such horrific and disturbing accounts. “Obasan’s” most tremendous feat, and arguably the most critical in evoking change, is when it was read by Ed Broadbunt in the House of Commons in 1988. When previous attempts to inform the government failed, literature was capable of conditioning the mind of government and ultimately in progressing political response. This was critical in the recognition of Japanese-Canadians by the government and began a new chapter in the way Canadians reflect on their history. Van Peer’s view can be directly correlated to “Obasan’s” relevance in Canadian politics, as without it Japanese- Canadians may have never been addressed, and Canada may have remained in their encapsulated framework in which their history is never reconciled. Literature was the apparatus deemed capable of altering the mindset of an entire government, and “Obasan”, and Joy Kogawa, shall remain forever synonymous with the idea of reconciliation for those Japanese-Canadians who were so destroyed by a reckless government policy. We have already witnessed the effects of such a change in mindset in the Truth and Reconciliation events that took place this year, and hopefully, other nations can find a way to explore and reconcile their dark past’s in ways similar to what “Obasan” has allowed the Canadian people.