Today we went to a field trip to the Rare Book Library. After learning for a few weeks about Obasan and Joy Kogawa in class, we got this chance to look at the rare materials that kept by the library in order to know more about Joy Kogawa and her work at that time.
It is very interesting that my group got the letters that were used as sources when Joy Kogawa worte her book but not the materials that directly connected with the book itself. With those letters, Joy Kogawa provided stories with higher historical accuracy. The letters can generally be divided into two parts, and are both talking about the repatriation. The first part showed one family wanted to get the chance of repatriation but the official did not give them enthusiastic reply. The other was the letter to thanking the official for helping the other Japanese family successfully get repatriation. From the cases in the letters, the trauma experienced by Japanese Canadian at that time can be seen. Some of the families had ill family members while some others even cannot finish their exams in high school. Those letters are the realistic documents that are saved until now, so they provided us with the truth happened at that time. Compared with Obasan, those letters tend to show what things people truly experienced in a more objective way.
Today’s field trip also offered me general information about how people at that time thinking about Obasan. While looking at the review of students and the media such as newspaper, I find that different people show different understanding of Kogawa’s work. Some book reviews took serious position to look at the issue pointed out by the book but some others tried to defend Canada as innocent in this event. Students also had various ideas toward Obasan. Some was willing to explore more on the Japanese internment and some others just felt boring about the long reading of the whole story. Joy Kogawa also faced the criticism of the publishers, who were not satisfied with her story and characters. Those different aspects of views reminded me of the discussion we had on class that we shared our own cultural background with other classmates. All those distinct cultures made big influence on how our ideas were shaping and that’s why we had so many different understandings of the same material. It is similar in this situation. Time, age and culture can all be factors that affect how people look at Joy Kogawa.
