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137th out of 386 books
—
1,282 voters
Obasan
by
Joy Kogawa
Based on the author's own experiences, this award-winning novel was the first to tell the story of the evacuation, relocation, and dispersal of Canadian citizens of Japanese ancestry during the Second World War.
Paperback, 320 pages
Published
December 27th 1993
by Anchor
(first published 1981)
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Obasan is narrated by Naomi, a sheltered and pampered child who is five years old when her life is drastically changed by the events at Pearl Harbor and the Second World War. As a Japanese Canadian, Naomi is separated from her parents, persecuted and eventually placed in an internment camp - common practice in Canada during WWII.
“If all this sounds like a bird’s-eye view to you, Nesan, it’s the reportage of a caged bird. I can’t really see what’s happening. We’re like a bunch of rabbits being c...more
“If all this sounds like a bird’s-eye view to you, Nesan, it’s the reportage of a caged bird. I can’t really see what’s happening. We’re like a bunch of rabbits being c...more
Before I picked up this book, I knew nothing about the history of Japanese-Canadians. Sadly, I know almost nothing about Canadian history, period, and it had never even occurred to me that the Canadian government might have had similar anti-Japanese policies during WWII.[return][return]The book starts with the narrator, Naomi, as an adult in the '70s. When she goes to see her aunt after her uncle's death, she finds a package from her other aunt containing a diary and letters written during the w...more
I am surprised by how many people have never read this book. Kogawa documents a dark part of our history that every person should be aware of. A must for every library.
********
Introduction:
There is a silence that cannot speak.
There is a silence that will not speak.
Beneath the grass the speaking dreams and beneath the dreams is a sensate sea. The speech that frees comes forth from that amniotic deep. To attend its voice, I can hear it say, is to embrace its absence. But I fail the task. The word...more
********
Introduction:
There is a silence that cannot speak.
There is a silence that will not speak.
Beneath the grass the speaking dreams and beneath the dreams is a sensate sea. The speech that frees comes forth from that amniotic deep. To attend its voice, I can hear it say, is to embrace its absence. But I fail the task. The word...more
I read this for a women's social history class. Obasan is a story about Japanese-Canadians during WWII told from the point of view of a young Japanese-Canadian girl from Vancouver whose family's life and future is torn apart by the Canadian interment policies for that time.
It is a story that has not been openly discussed within Canadian history classes as it in juxtaposition to how we view ourselves during times of war. We are the good guys, the peace keepers, sometimes the heroes, but not the '...more
It is a story that has not been openly discussed within Canadian history classes as it in juxtaposition to how we view ourselves during times of war. We are the good guys, the peace keepers, sometimes the heroes, but not the '...more
Penguin Group Canada|April 4, 2006|Trade Paperback|ISBN: 978-0-14-305502-0
Story Description:
A powerful and passionate novel, Obasan tells, through the eyes of a child, the moving story of Japanese Canadians during the Second World War. Naomi is a sheltered and beloved five-year-old when Pearl Harbor changes her life. Separated from her mother, she watches bewildered as she and her family become enemy aliens, persecuted and despised in their own land. Surrounded by hardship and pain, Naomi is pro...more
Story Description:
A powerful and passionate novel, Obasan tells, through the eyes of a child, the moving story of Japanese Canadians during the Second World War. Naomi is a sheltered and beloved five-year-old when Pearl Harbor changes her life. Separated from her mother, she watches bewildered as she and her family become enemy aliens, persecuted and despised in their own land. Surrounded by hardship and pain, Naomi is pro...more
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Obasan by Joy Kogawa is a landmark for modern Canadian fiction. While Obasan is a work of fiction, it reads almost as a memoir - a narrative of suffering, persecution and rising above adversity. Kogawa's novel deals with the relocation of Japanese Canadians after Pearl Harbour during WWII - a marginalized area of Canadian history which many still are oblivious to.
Kogawa's prose is full of seamless transitions through time; moving back and forth between the main character Naomi's adulthood in Gra...more
Kogawa's prose is full of seamless transitions through time; moving back and forth between the main character Naomi's adulthood in Gra...more
Multi-generational family saga from 1941 to the 1970's told from the perspective of a daughter from age 5 to 35. The book opens with Naomi as a five year old Japanese-Canadian living in Vancouver with her upper middle class family, her mother having just gone to Japan to visit elderly relatives. War measures taken to protect the Pacific Coast from Japanese invasion begin with intering all citizens and residents of Japanese descent in Hastings Park (still in use as a horse race track in Vancouver...more
Title: Obasan
Author: Kogawa Joy
Had you ever wonder what life it is like being a Japanese Canadian Citizen during the Second World War? An award wining novel written by a Japanese Canadian Citizen will tell you. Kogawa Joy had illustrated detail of traditional Japanese life during the darkest age for the Japanese, the World War II.
If you are a person who interested in Japanese culture like me you will absolutely love this award wining novel. By reading the conversation between the author’s and...more
Author: Kogawa Joy
Had you ever wonder what life it is like being a Japanese Canadian Citizen during the Second World War? An award wining novel written by a Japanese Canadian Citizen will tell you. Kogawa Joy had illustrated detail of traditional Japanese life during the darkest age for the Japanese, the World War II.
If you are a person who interested in Japanese culture like me you will absolutely love this award wining novel. By reading the conversation between the author’s and...more
I probably shouldn’t have liked this book, but for some reason I did. I don’t usually like books that have this much morality built into the structure of story, but everything seemed to work in this one. I don’t usually like long or frequent dream sequences, but I actually found some of them quite enjoyable. I found that I hated some of the characters like Aunt Emily and the brother, but it ended up that I wasn’t really supposed to like them an by the end, the main character ended up hating all...more
Mar 12, 2012
Lexxie (un)Conventional Bookviews
rated it
5 of 5 stars
Recommended to Lexxie (un)Conventional Bookviews by:
Professor for the class
This book was filled with melancholy, beautiful prose, and aching memories.
The point of view shifts between adult Naomi, and the child Naomi was just before, during and right after WW2. The things the child didn't understand, and that the adult still has trouble dealing with. The fact that she was born in Canada, both of her parents were also born in Canada, but were of Japanese origin made their lives very difficult.
The camps the Japanese Canadian were sent to were cold, hard and segregated fa...more
The point of view shifts between adult Naomi, and the child Naomi was just before, during and right after WW2. The things the child didn't understand, and that the adult still has trouble dealing with. The fact that she was born in Canada, both of her parents were also born in Canada, but were of Japanese origin made their lives very difficult.
The camps the Japanese Canadian were sent to were cold, hard and segregated fa...more
This book is about a family that ha s to go through the death of a beloved uncle and mother and this story is about how they deal with every thing and how the family reacts to every thing. Also i loved the ending of the book because it ended how it started and i thought that was a genius way to write a book. And the ending reminded me of the epic of Gilgamesh because the first and last lines of the book were the same. Also i would recommend this book to anybody because it was a very sad but inte...more
'Obasan' by Joy Kogawa is mesmerizing. The story is about the treatment of people of Japanese decent in Canada during World War II. The story is poignant, heart-wrenching, and incredibly frustrating all at the same time.
I know my history, I know what Canada did to Japanese immigrants and Japanese Canadians during World War II and the years following. However, having the story re-told from the perspective of a child, Naomi, is quite powerful. The reader feels the mounting frustration at events we...more
I know my history, I know what Canada did to Japanese immigrants and Japanese Canadians during World War II and the years following. However, having the story re-told from the perspective of a child, Naomi, is quite powerful. The reader feels the mounting frustration at events we...more
This is the third time I have read this book, and I still really enjoy it.
The story folows Naomi, a Canadian-born Japanese citizen of Canada, who after the death of her Uncle, decides to find answers to the silence that she grow up around after the bombing of Pearl Harbour.
Even through this is a fiction book, it does a great job of explaining what was happening to many Japanese-Canadians during World War II. Many were forced out of their homes into small communities, or camps, while others wer...more
The story folows Naomi, a Canadian-born Japanese citizen of Canada, who after the death of her Uncle, decides to find answers to the silence that she grow up around after the bombing of Pearl Harbour.
Even through this is a fiction book, it does a great job of explaining what was happening to many Japanese-Canadians during World War II. Many were forced out of their homes into small communities, or camps, while others wer...more
I read this one for one of my University classes, and I really enjoyed it! It definitely doesn't cover a light and easy subject, so it isn't the type of book I would usually pick up myself, but I'm glad that I got the opportunity to read it for school because it is one powerful book! I'm proud to be Canadian, but it still always makes me sad to hear about some of the horrible things that have gone on in our country's past...residential schools, and Japanese-Canadians being placed into Internment...more
Because Obasan is on the list of course texts I need to teach this term, it is one of the few books on the 10-10-12 list that I have read before (the others are also books I need to teach). It is certainly the only book I’ve read four times before. Why, you might be thinking, would I need to read it again if I’ve read it four times already? Combination of terrible, no good, very bad memory for plot and a (maybe?) unmemorable plot itself. (and because of the good teaching practice, that, too, I t...more
I read this book in 1991. Kogawa is a poet and although this is a novel, it is also a long thoughtful poem. I did not know about the Canadian evacuation of Japanese citizens during WWII until I read this novel.
Victims of trauma often do not speak and although this book is about silence, it is strongly against remaining silent.
I cannot do her work justice by any other manner than by copying her own words. The following passage is in the introduction to her novel:
"I hate the stillness. I hate t...more
Victims of trauma often do not speak and although this book is about silence, it is strongly against remaining silent.
I cannot do her work justice by any other manner than by copying her own words. The following passage is in the introduction to her novel:
"I hate the stillness. I hate t...more
Before reading this novel I had little to no knowledge about how Japanese Canadians were treated during WWII in Canada. This book is about Naomi, a Canadian of Japanese descent growing up during the internment in Canada and the trials and tribulations she and her family experience.
I found this novel hard to engage in at times and follow because of all of the descriptive language used by the author. It wasn’t until a quarter of the way through the book, when the diary entries started, that I fel...more
I found this novel hard to engage in at times and follow because of all of the descriptive language used by the author. It wasn’t until a quarter of the way through the book, when the diary entries started, that I fel...more
Is it just me or are you getting sick of books that talk about WWII. I know it's full of fictional potential but it's beginning to feel as though one out of every three novels is dealing with the topic these days. Can't we choose a different war? Or no war at all? I'm beginning to get exasperated.
That being said, Kogawa has written a very interesting book about the topic. From the eyes of the Japanese discriminated against in Canada, this book, for once, moves away from Nazis and Europe to give...more
That being said, Kogawa has written a very interesting book about the topic. From the eyes of the Japanese discriminated against in Canada, this book, for once, moves away from Nazis and Europe to give...more
Obasan is a fascinating look into the lives and experiences of a Japanese-Canadian family from the perspective of an adult family member who was born and raised in Canada. Through this novel, the reader discovers what might be to some a surprising aspect of Canada's past: our attempt to remove all Asian immigrants from Canada after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor.
This is the only book that has ever made me cry. I was genuinely caught off guard by the sheer devastation described in the last few pa...more
This is the only book that has ever made me cry. I was genuinely caught off guard by the sheer devastation described in the last few pa...more
None of this was ever mentioned in my history classes. And it's not something I've ever thought about before. This is a sad tale of how Japanese Canadians were treated during the war. Some of them had never even been to Japan. Naomi being very little doesn't understand whats going on, even asks her dad if she is a Jap. They get moved about and seprated from their familes. Even after the war they are still not allowed home. It's one of those books that you think about long after you've finished i...more
Obasan looks at a dark page of Canadian and US history that makes modern-day caucasians uncomfortable - the racist treatment of Japanese-Canadians and Japanese-Americans during WWII. While the treatment of Japanese-Canadians was far, far less abhorent than the Nazi treatment of Jews, the fact that a society of educated intelligent people could so easily accept and participate in racist oppression of their neighbours and fellow citizens is truly distressing. One hopes that modern Canadians would...more
This is an amazing story--amazing that as a Canadian, I know so little of the Japanese internment. I know we studied it in school, but more as an incidental rather than a shameful episode in our history. Kogawa is known as a poet and her poetry comes through in her book. I think this should be a must-read for all Canadians so that we lose some of our smugness about our "just society" and recognize that even in our country, racism, especially systemic and government supported racism, can lead to...more
Reading this book was an assignment for my English Lit class when I was a Junior in college. Not only was this a book that was thought-provoking and well-written, it was a book that truly changed my life because until being assigned to read this book, I was ignorant of the Japanese internment camps that were established by the USA during WWII. I remember feeling horrified at the prospect that we would have such places where American citizens were housed, but I was more horrified to have never le...more
“Where do any of us come from in this cold country? … We come from the country that plucks its people out like weeds and flings them into the roadside. … We grow where we are not seen, we flourish where we are not heard, the thick undergrowth of unlikely planting. … We come from cemeteries full of skeletons with wild roses in their grinning teeth. We come from our untold tales that wait for their telling. We come from Canada, this land that is like every land, filled with the wise, the fearful,...more
Obasan by Joy Kogawa is a war book about life for 5 year-old Japanese-Canadian Naomi Nakane, during and after WWII. This book is intended for young adults. I thought the book was good and well-written.
After the death of Naomi’s uncle, she thinks back to what her life was like when she was 5, when Japan attacked Pearl Harbour 31 years ago. When she was younger no one ever told her why her and her family were separated and why she had to move to the interior. But when she visits her aunt’s house...more
After the death of Naomi’s uncle, she thinks back to what her life was like when she was 5, when Japan attacked Pearl Harbour 31 years ago. When she was younger no one ever told her why her and her family were separated and why she had to move to the interior. But when she visits her aunt’s house...more
This book took me 8 months to finish ... not because it was long, but because I kept putting it down. I just couldn't get into it. And I found that I didn't care about the characters like I usually do. But I kept reading because it was recommended by an English teacher I really admire. The thing is, there were some parts where the language was really beautiful--totally something I would enjoy. But I just couldn't get into it. The last three chapters were where I finally started caring, which is...more
Joy Kogawa’s Obasan opened me up to a history I barely even knew existed—that of the Japanese Canadians during WWII. I initially assumed, like most people I’ve spoken to, that the US’s treatment of Japanese at this time was far worse than the Canadian treatment. I was wrong. While the Japanese Americans were protected by our Bill of Rights, the Japanese Canadians had no such constitutional protections. Unlike in the US, the Japanese Canadians’ land was seized and sold by the government, they wer...more
Jan 22, 2010
Brittany
rated it
3 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
Japanese Canadians, those looking to learn more about human rights
Shelves:
canadian,
school-books,
historical-epic,
literary-fiction,
fiction,
international-flavour,
war
How I Came To Read This Book: Grade 12 lit, in Grade 11 from what I remember.
The Plot: This semi-autobiographical tale tells the story of a young girl and what happened to her, her family, and the Japanese people in Canada during WW2 and the internment camps that are often overlooked as one of the darkest periods in Canadian human rights history. From her girlhood days and beyond, the story details how the family was torn apart, and how the curtain was slowly drawn back for the protagonist to r...more
The Plot: This semi-autobiographical tale tells the story of a young girl and what happened to her, her family, and the Japanese people in Canada during WW2 and the internment camps that are often overlooked as one of the darkest periods in Canadian human rights history. From her girlhood days and beyond, the story details how the family was torn apart, and how the curtain was slowly drawn back for the protagonist to r...more
Really enjoyed this book, but can see why others didn't. The Language is very visual, metaphors and mixed metaphors are created, used and altered thoughout the novel. Reader needs to slow down and truly engage in the Japanese influence in the writing and story-telling. Would be a great novel to teach at a higher level. Too often we teach books too early for the optimum effect and understanding. Just because there are no big words, and is 300pages or less, does not necessarily mean its truly acce...more
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Joy Kogawa is best known for her award-winning novel OBASAN (1981), one of the Literary Review of Canada's 100 Most Important Canadian Books. Obasan is a lyrical and heart-rending account of the losses and suffering endured by Japanese Canadians during WWII. The story is told from the perspective of a middle-aged woman, Naomi Nakane, remembering her experiences as a young girl. Kogawa has also pub...more
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May 31, 2013 02:51pm