Last week in out ASTU class we read and discussed Joy Kogawa’s novel Obasan. While the book itself is complex and stimulating in its discussion of memory and themes of cultural memory, trauma and silence as well as narrative lenses (which I have talked about in previous blog posts), I thought this book was interesting as it connected to a recent Political Science lecture and class discussion. In this lecture Professor Erickson went on a rant following the recent November 13^th Paris attacks that shocked the world. He discussed the effects of such attacks and how, as an international community, we should respond and fight back against these forces of terror. The apex of his lecture for me, was when he talked about discrimination and how we should not be goaded into ‘painting with a large brush’, as a Culturally hegemonic view of the ‘west’ vs ‘east’ does not benefit anyone but the terrorists as it creates divides, instead of bonds. Joy Kogawa’s novel may not have specifically intended to connect with such a subject, but it’s themes of cultural oppression and discrimination are relevant to the discussion of fear and the crisis of IS terrorism that the world is experiencing in the present age. By connecting Obasan’s discussion of discrimination, fear and hatred of a certain group of people or cultural heritage, to the discrimination that people of the Islamic faith and Syrian refugees are experiencing, I think we can learn some very important lessons from Joy Kogawa’s book.

Joy Kogawa’s novel has an especially profound effect on me, as I was born and raised in Vancouver where the book begins. Her descriptions and name drops of places in Vancouver, particularly the Hastings park field by the PNE, and her house on West 64^th in Marpole are places I have visited, played soccer on and driven by many a time, all with a darker background that I didn’t know about before. One quote particularly resonated with me because of this: “Vancouver – the water, the weather, the beauty, this paradise – is filled up and overflowing with hatred now.”(130).  As a Canadian living in the same city as Joy’s home town, it’s hard for me to imagine that other Caucasian people like myself, especially Vancouverites, would ever discriminate so harshly against other Canadian citizens based solely on skin colour. This is an interesting theme of the book which relates to the terror crisis of our world. With support from the government and for such a long period, Japanese people who were Canadian citizens were seen as so alien as to deport and imprison them. “Father says. ‘We’re Canadian’. It is a riddle, Stephen tells me. We are both the enemy and not the enemy. (100)”.

After going to Erickson’s lecture, I see a parallel with the discrimination and hatred that Naomi faced and that which Syrian refugees, as well as people of Islamic faith are experiencing. Like in Obasan, these people face broad discrimination which extends to all people with their same skin colour or religion, even if they are citizens of your home country and have lived next to them for many years. While I myself am not scared by the terrorist’s threats as I understand that their goal is to paralyze people with fear so that they turn against each other, the politics of fear that ISIS is spreading across the world is changing people’s views of other cultures and religions. Even in Canada, we can see the effect of ISIS’s fear spreading, with a mosque in Peterborough being burnt down on November the 15^th, just two days after the Nov. the 13^th attacks. Such hate crimes are reminiscent of the actions and feelings of Canadians caused by the fear of the Japanese, which were sparked by Pearl Harbour and the war time atrocities of the Japanese military. We can see from examples in Obasan that painting generalizations of cultures with such broad brush strokes does nothing to solve such conflict. In fact, in the case of IS it fuels the fire of such forces of hatred as to divide us. How can we fight for peace, when we are disabled by hatred and fear?

Professor Erickson in his rant also talked about this type of Western centralized thinking that makes us not so different from the terrorists, in that we think that our thinking is the right one. We see this in Obasan as well, with the government detaining their own citizens due to discrimination. They believed so strongly that anyone Japanese was wrong and evil, that through this fear it gave them the right to abuse the Japanese’s rights as citizens. “So long as they designate the enemy by that term and not us, it doesn’t matter.”(Obasan, 118). But these people, just as the ones who are Muslim and want to freely practice their faith, without being labeled as a radical or a terrorist, are just like you and me. Their religion and culture is just as peaceful as yours, or mine. It is the people, and their situation that cause the violent acts we see in the IS, not a skin colour or type of culture. This goes for Syrian refugees as well. Not taking into account the economic and political factors that surround their admittance to countries, these people are labelled too broadly by the public as harmful and dangerous, when in fact, they are fleeing the exact same thing that we fear. “’(that) the innocent should be made to suffer for the guilty?…That’s scapegoatism.’” (49). In Obasan the same is true, and yet all new Japanese immigrants were sent back to the horror of war that they tried to leave behind. Assuming that you know the right way of thinking is pure ignorance, and it is worse when that translates into action and hatred of the cultures and practices of a people you have taken little time trying to get to know or understand.

This idea is what I took away form Erickson’s lecture, and what was reinforced for me by our reading of Obasan. The novels narrative lens makes it an even more powerful message, as it shows how it affects further generations down the line, with issues of their past and the silence conflict of cultural identity that comes with that past. I think that what Rough Lock Bill says in chapter 21 summarizes what we should take away from Obasan as how it relates to the worlds present crisis: “Don’t make sense, do it, all this fuss about skin?” (144). As humans across the world, we all come from the same beginnings and all face the same end, we are the same regardless of skin colour, and should treat each other as such. Similarly, Erickson concluded his lecture by saying that our current hegemonic way of thinking does not get us anywhere. We have continued this way of thinking for centuries and it has landed us in the same boat every time. Instead, we should look to greater cosmopolitan solutions that differ from our current ways of dealing with such events, and not be swept away in a wave of fear. Obasan reinforces this as it is an example of how this way of thinking has gotten us nowhere in the past; it is a forecast for the future, which, from reading the book is pretty gruesome and serious without collective action taken to change our ways.