Month: November 2015

For the past few weeks, our ASTU class has continued to focus on Obasan by Joy Kogawa for analysis regarding trauma and forgetting as common themes. However, on Thursday, Nov. 19, our ASTU class took a much more interactive approach to the work of Kogawa by going to the Rare Books and Special Collections at UBC.

First, just some thoughts about the rare books archives first:

The archives were a lot more modern than I thought, and it looks just like a regular library. For some reason, I kept on thinking it was going to be more like a dudgeon or something, but what I thought was really interesting was that our UBC location holds some of the original manuscripts from the biblical era (I think?) and to know that those artifacts are the only existing versions of it in the whole world really emphasizes the importance of the artifacts. To know that you are in a place where you can view the items created by people thousands of years ago is really amazing.

Another perspective of the archives that I never really considered are online archives. It’s just strange to think that anything considered to be rare exists in an online form, with technology only growing within the last century. This, compared to thousands of years of using paper or animal skins to document human thoughts is quite strange when you think about it.

Anyways, moving onto the Kogawa fonds. These collections held Kogawa’s process of writing her fictional novel, with a huge part of the collection consisted of factual items, such as newspaper articles, letters, government documents, etc. There were also reviews of the novel, personal letters reaching out to the author and historical articles regarding the Japanese Internment in Canada.

What I found that was similar to my initial reaction of the book were how so many people were related to what I was feeling – that unexpected connection with the novel because of simple details or relatable incidents. I think Kogawa’s close narration of Obasan touched a lot of people, because she played a very familiar role of an aging grandmother/aunt taking care of you (or should I say Naomi). Some of the letters were from Japanese – Canadian children, who I think really connected with the book because often times, it is an older female member (like the grandmother or aunt) of the Japanese family that takes care of the household.

It was Kogawa’s ability to reach out to her readers in Obasan and the fonds expressing that process and its end results that made me really see her as a fellow human being (same as me except an author!). Seeing physical drafts, brainstorms, reviews, and personal response letters created the atmosphere that these were all the collections and artifacts directed at a very real living person. The emotions she expressed in her novel and felt the readers were from a very real living person. The facts and fiction on her work were based on very real situations.

That is to say, by visiting the Joy Kogawa fonds, it bridged the missing connection between the final production of the work Obasan and the author who created it. But would my experience with the fonds be different if Kogawa was not able to initially “hook” me through my personal experience of my grandmother? If I were not really interested, would I have looked into as much as I did?

It’s been a quite while since my last post but today I am going to talk about the two works that we are studying in class: a graphic narrative called Safe Area Gorzade by Joe Sacco and a fiction novel called Obasan by Joy Kogawa. Although these two works are different in how they express their story through styles and context, both works convey messages of trauma and remembering.

Personally, I felt that Safe Area Gorzade was a lot more aggressive in portraying trauma than Persepolis. This, in turn with its raw and realistic drawing style, made me (the reader) feel a lot more ‘stunned’ by the narrative. What I want to draw attention to with this graphic narrative is that it had a common theme: the use of black and white as its colours. This use of stylistic design kept me kind of aware and distant from the actual storyline – as an outsider looking in and being aware that I am an outsider. If the use of colour were introduced in both graphic works, I think I would focus more on how gross/realistic/good the illustrations are rather than the message the image is trying to express. It would also desensitize me to the gruesome nature of the work, such as the people injured by war (123) in Safe Area Gorzade, to repetitively see the blood and gore in realistic colours over and over again. With that said, the controlled black and white colour scheme reminds me of a lot of real life investigation TV shows or murder documentaries where the reenacted crime scene is usually always in a colour filter or in black and white. This again, in my opinion, has the same effect on the viewers – creating awareness as a viewer and retaining sensitivity to the nature of the topic (death, war, murder etc.).

On the other hand, Obasan by Joy Kogawa brought up a very personal act of remembering for me. In the scene where Naomi (the main character) describes her Aunt, referred to as Obasan, as being a part of her house reminded me of my own grandmother. Naomi goes on to explain that Obasan keeps every little thing that she comes in contact with, whether it be eraser stubs or paper doilies in the “house [that is] now her blood and bones”(15). This is just like my grandmother who also keeps every little thing, whether it is useful or not. I’m not sure why but if I ever have any questions about any of the things she keeps, she always has some kind of story or comment to tell about it. In that sense, my grandmother and Obasan are alike because both the houses they live in have a part of their identity. This memory was just very touching to me because it was so unexpectedly relatable – I didn’t think Kogawa would have felt the need to include that in her novel.

After discussing these aspects of the works we are studying in class, it only leaves me with other questions about why Sacco and Kogawa chose to express the way that they did.

Could Sacco’s narrative have been more powerful if selective scenes were coloured?

Was it Sacco’s choice to leave it black and white, or was it influenced by some other force that set boundaries as to what could be exposed to the general public?

Why does Obasan collect everything? Is it to gain control over what she could do versus a reality she could not control before? (Future VS past)

Sacco, Joe. Safe Area Gorzade. Seattle: Fantagraphics Books, 2000.     Print.

Kogawa, Joy. Obasan. Toronto: Penguin Books,1981. Print.