What are books at the most basic level? Words and sentences that blend together to weave a story? A portal to another world, where wizards and magic abound? Or as Willie van Peer would have you think, the cornerstone of modern society? While these are all true, books are on the most simplistic level, merely ideas. Ideas that wear ink and adorn pages, so that they may be passed on to readers like you and me. Ideas that en-flame the heart and captivate the mind, that slowly grow on you like a lover and then leave, harkening for a better tomorrow. Stalin himself acknowledged the immense sway ideas hold, stating: “Ideas are more powerful then guns.”
Though the Nussbaum and Van Peer’s articles we’ve been told that words wield power, but it wasn’t until we read Obasan and noticed the dramatic effect it had upon Canadian society that we realized how powerful a book can truly be. While the Japanese-Canadians interned in Canada during the Second World War suffered unfair treatment, their ordeal was often overshadowed by the true nightmares of the Second World War, terrors such as Auschwitz and Nanjing. These victims went on, suffering in silence throughout the years, until Joy Kogawa published Obasan and gave the victims of Japanese interment camps a voice. Once they were seen and heard, the public rallied behind their cause, leading to the apology and reimbursement of all victims by the Canadian government. In the same vein, Ellie Weisel’s Night showcased the atrocities committed by Hitler’s Third Reich. Weisel’s small but powerful book was a moving firsthand account of the inhumanities of the human creature, and his book’s legacy still impacts people today.
Seeing literature actively play a part in society has been most interesting, and given me a new perspective on the social impact of works such as the aforementioned Obasan. By being able to “relive” the interment of Japanese-Canadians though the eyes of young Naomi, Kogawa puts her readers through the same ordeal she faced and develops an attachment between the reader and Naomi, Obasan’s child protagonist.
While most people (understandably) find Obasan powerful in it’s retelling of the ordeal of Japanese-Canadians during the Second World War, I found Obasan meaningful as it led me to understand the impact literature has. Not only on the literary world, but in the real world as well.
Thanks for this posting, CK. I, too, am interested not only in what Obasan achieves as literature, but by what it has come to mean since it was published– what it has done in the world, and why it has been taken up the way it has.
Though Obasan would be perfect evidence for Van Peers article I still can’t help but disagree still. Not some much with the point that literature helps mould the minds of society and cause great change; but to the extent and weight that Van Peer seems to put behind it. It almost seems as if he believes it is the main reason why change occurs, and i just simply do not see it that way. There could be many other factors, factors like technology, parenting, just perhaps the way economy is at the time could affect many peoples options. Giving the weight of the credit to Lit and fiction, I feel is assuming it has more power than in reality.