Dear readers,
It’s been almost a month since my last blog entry, I hope you are all doing alright. Last week we’ve been looking at the archive of Joy Kogawa and her draft of Obasan in the R.B.S.C. library, so here are some afterthoughts of my visit.
During our visit, we were given different folders filled with Kogawa’s drafts and related documents. Inside my folder, I found letters from government officials to Japanese Canadian. These letters were mostly from Slocan City, while some of them are application forms to the immigration office. There are applications for shipment of effects, as well as letters from Japanese Canadians inquiring about the procedures of repatriation. Among all the papers, the one that stood out is a letter of confrontation to the government’s decision from a woman named Grace. In her letter to some government officers, she protested against the decision of forcing the Japanese Canadian into either moving to the east or submit themselves to repatriation. She argues that it is an unfair action from Canadian government which is abusing its people. All these letters and documents were written by different people, yet they were experiencing the same situation. All these different people and different experiences were put together by Joy Kogawa, into this book that we are reading, “Obasan”.
The story in “Obasan” and the experience of Naomi is not the only thing that Joy Kogawa is trying to tell us. Instead, looking at all these documents and drafts that Joy Kogawa has written, led to the realization that “Obasan” is not a story about an individual, but rather the collective memory of a generation. “Obasan” represents the collectivism that was hidden among the Japanese Canadians, the Issei, Nisei and Sansei. Their lives and time that they have spent in the land of Canada, their feelings towards the nation and their contribution to the society. One might say that a single story cannot represent the history of the generation; however, the purpose of collectivism is not about capturing every single detail, but rather to embrace the emotions at the particular point of time in history.
In today’s world, we are experiencing an extremely fast-paced lifestyle, where the flow of information has never been this fast. We can gain access to news and stories from all around the world with just a couple swipes and taps on our phones. The exploding amount of information also means that people are forgetting faster than ever. All these global issues that everyone seemed to be caring about, would be forgotten within a week or two. Just like the story of “Obasan”, there are stories which influenced generations of people, most importantly there are stories that should never be forgotten, and that is the purpose of collective memories.