Hey everyone,
This past week in my Arts Studies class, we took a field trip to the Rare Books, Special Collections, and University Archives in the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre. The purpose of our trip was to explore the hundreds of documents that were collected by Joy Kogawa, surrounding her novel Obasan. Among these documents were letters from publishers (acceptance and rejection), letters from editors and fans, and draft after draft of Kogawa’s poetic writing. Obasan tells the story of a young Japanese-Canadian girl living in Vancouver during WWII and the Japanese internment. Due to the story’s many harsh truths, and the year Kogawa was trying to get it published in(1981), many of the artifacts were rejection letters from publishers and hate mail from readers. All of the documents in Joy Kogawa’s archives are of much importance when examining the process of Obasan as a whole, however, I found that I left the Archives that day with more questions than I’d started with.
When thinking the process of writing such a traumatic book, I can’t help wondering how Kogawa, herself, felt throughout the time. There were many drafts of paragraphs and chapters among the stacks scribbled with thoughts on the plot and characters; however, what was missing was a first person account of Kogawa’s thoughts and feelings, such as a journal. I understand that a journal-type document would be far too personal to leave behind in an archive; but It would give perfect insight into everything that is hidden about the process. Because we don’t have such documents, I can only imagine what Kogawa was thinking every time she got rejected, ridiculed, or judged for writing Obasan. I would love to know if Kogawa’s connections to characters like Naomi and her mother, made it harder, or easier for her to write. While the Archives paint a pretty good picture of how Obasan came together, and of and the effect that it made across the country; I still wonder what was going through Kogawa’s mind when all of it was happening.
Until next week!
Mia Spare