It has been a long time since I’ve written a blog post; and in that time, we finished analyzing Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, whizzed through Safe Area Gorazde by Joe Saco and are now currently working through Obasan, a novel by Joy Kogawa. I’ve done a lot of thinking about what I wanted to write about this week and there is one topic that is constantly comes to mind: Naomi’s sexual abuse in Obasan. This is probably because this is a topic that is very personal to me and something about the way in which Kogawa wrote about this experience really touched me.
As a little background, Obasan is a novel narrated by a woman named Naomi Nakane set in the 1970s as she recounts the events of Japanese internment in Canada. The novel jumps between the present and past and in one of these time jumps to the past, Naomi tells us about a secret she has kept from her mother all these years: the fact that Old Man Gower used to repeatedly molest her starting at the age of 4. What is very interesting about this segment of the novel is the fact that Naomi does not just tell us what happens as a grown woman, but she tells us the story from the perspective of her 4 year old self.
On page 74, Naomi says, “I am a small girl being carried away through the break in the shrubs” and similarly on page 75, she simply states, “I am four years old.” There is something about the short, direct sentences that she uses in this section that give off the impression of being emotionless and disconnected from this experience. Moreover, the way in which she describes her surroundings and mechanically describes the event as “this happened, then this happened, then this…” suggests to the reader that Naomi has not yet analyzed how this event has really impacted her. I would go so far as to say that Naomi was very confused at the time in which it was happening, and therefore she was not capable, at the age of 4, to fully comprehend the extreme impact that this event had had on her. She may have even thought that because the event was not documented or shared, that she would be able to simply forget it and act as if it never happened. She had been silent about her abuser for a very very long time and the following is her rationale for her silence: “If I speak, I will split open and spill out. To be whole and safe I must hide in the foliage, odorless as a newborn fawn” (76). So from a young age, because of this experience, Naomi was taught silence and shame. She came to understand that she had to be silent in order to be safe; she had to disappear so that no one could notice her suffering. From a young age, Naomi learned how to be afraid of her emotions.
The way in which she interpreted and understood this traumatic experience goes on to shape how she interprets and understands Japanese internment in Canada. She does not see the need in creating an uproar the way her Aunt Emily does, rather she simply wants to forget. It isn’t until she learns of her mothers death years later that she understands the importance of sharing secrets, stories and emotions. Naomi wants to remember; she wants to feel. She realizes that not talking about events or experiences doesn’t make it go away or disappear; it just makes the suffering even more unbearable.