Hello, dear reader, and welcome back. The final blog post (for the first semester) will be a recap of the experience of visiting the Joy Kogawa Fond. As a class, we went to the Irving K. Barber Library in UBC to take a look at the Joy Kogawa Fond, which is essentially a collection of artifacts and primary items related to her historical novel Obasan.

But before we were even able toenter the Joy Kogawa Fond, we had to go through a series of security requirements. We entered what seemed like a decontamination room, where we had to leave all of our belongings in a locker provided within the room. After being cleansed of our personal belongings (including coats and jackets – no pockets allowed!), our class was escorted to a meeting room containing the Joy Kogawa Fond.

Folders containing papers of all ages were found on top of tables, awaiting for someone to open the folder and examine its contents. Inside the folders contained all sorts of papers – old newspaper articles about Obasan, appreciation or rejection letters to Kogawa from editors and publishers, fan mail from the young and old, Kogawa’s many drafts with editorial notes and edits, and many more. This is the Joy Kogawa fond, a collection of artifacts (primary sources) from different time periods.

What I found very appealing was that anyone can contribute to the Joy Kogawa fond! Seeing the stacked folders felt very uplifting, because it confirms how controversial Kogawa’s work regarding the struggle of Japanese-Canadians really is, and we are also able to see Kogawa’s work process throughout the years. Having experienced these artifacts first-hand made me want to learn more about the struggle of Japanese-Canadians during the unfortunate events of WWII, and really made me wonder why the Canadian school system doesn’t cover this topic in more detail.

It’s almost reminds me of a term I learned not too long ago called ‘forgetting as humiliated silence,’  which essentially means to forget something (usually traumatic) by drawing the public’s attention to other things. I think that Canadian school systems are conditioning the next generation to forget about Canada’s dark history, which only makes studying and analyzing Kogawa’s work that much more important.

I’m going to make a bold statement that Obasan is an extremely important piece of literature that should be read by all Canadians, because it is important to remember the mistakes of the past so that we can prevent it from happening again in the future. Much like procrastinating, ignoring the problem isn’t going to fix anything. It’s important that the efforts of Kogawa and many other Japanese-Canadians in their struggle for equality should not be forgotten, and the Fond serves as the perfect place where we can experience their struggles first-hand.