Obasan

Obasan
Author: Joy Kogawa
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2016-09-13
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 073523390X

Winner of the American Book Award 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.

Itsuka

Itsuka
Author: Joy Kogawa
Publisher:
Total Pages: 279
Release: 1993
Genre: Canadiens d'origine japonaise - Évacuation et relogement, 1942-1945 - Romans
ISBN: 9780140169881

Writing Against the Silence

Writing Against the Silence
Author: Arnold E. Davidson
Publisher: Canadian Fiction Studies
Total Pages: 0
Release: 1993
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9781550221794

A literary exploration of Joy Kogawa's Obasan.

Locations of the Sacred

Locations of the Sacred
Author: William Closson James
Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press
Total Pages: 289
Release: 1998-04-28
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0889202931

In ten essays, James (Queen's U., Kingston) examines various derivations of the sacred in contemporary Canadian culture. Most of the essays focus on the religious aspects of modern Canadian English fiction including the fiction of Hugh MacLennan, Morley Callaghan, Margaret Atwood, and Joy Kogawa.

Gently to Nagasaki

Gently to Nagasaki
Author: Joy Kogawa
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2016
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9781987915150

Gently to Nagasaki is a spiritual pilgrimage, an exploration both communal and intensely personal. Set in Vancouver and Toronto, the outposts of Slocan and Coaldale, the streets of Nagasaki and the high mountains of Shikoku, Japan, it is also an account of a remarkable life. As a child during WWII, Joy Kogawa was interned with her family and thousands of other Japanese Canadians by the Canadian government. Her acclaimed novel Obasan, based on that experience, brought her literary recognition and played a critical role in the movement for redress. Kogawa knows what it means to be classified as the enemy, and she seeks urgently to get beyond false and dangerous distinctions of "us" and "them." Interweaving the events of her own life with catastrophes like the bombing of Nagasaki and the massacre by the Japanese imperial army at Nanking, she wrestles with essential questions like good and evil, love and hate, rage and forgiveness, determined above all to arrive at her own truths. Poetic and unflinching, this is a long awaited memoir from one of Canada's most distinguished literary elders.

A Song of Lilith

A Song of Lilith
Author: Joy Kogawa
Publisher: Global Professional Publishi
Total Pages: 144
Release: 2000
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9781551923666

Joy Kogawa, internationally celebrated author of Obasan and The Rain Ascends, offers a feminist version of the biblical story of Lilith, the "first Eve." Illustrated by Lilian Broca, A Song of Lilith combines poetry and artwork in a powerful ode to truth, transformation, and homecoming.

Becoming My Mother's Daughter

Becoming My Mother's Daughter
Author: Erika Gottlieb
Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press
Total Pages: 188
Release: 2008-03-14
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1554580307

Becoming My Mother’s Daughter: A Story of Survival and Renewal tells the story of three generations of a Jewish Hungarian family whose fate has been inextricably bound up with the turbulent history of Europe, from the First World War through the Holocaust and the communist takeover after World War II, to the family’s dramatic escape and emmigration to Canada. The emotional centre and narrative voice of the story belong to Eva, an artist, dreamer, and writer trying to work through her complex and deep relationship with her mother, whose portrait she cannot paint until she completes her journey through memory. The core of the book is Eva’s riveting recollection of the last months of World War II in Budapest, seen through a child’s eyes, and is reminiscent in its power of scenes in Joy Kogawa’s Obasan. Exploring the bond between generations of mothers and daughters, the book illustrates the struggle between the need for independence and the search for continuity, the significant impact of childhood on adult life, the reshaping of personality in immigration, the importance of dreams in making us face reality, and the redemptive power of memory. Illustrations by the author throughout the book, some in colour, enhance the story.

Naomi's Tree

Naomi's Tree
Author: Joy Kogawa
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2011
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 9781554551842

A young couple leaves Japan for the coast of Canada, bringing a cherry seed to plant in their new garden. During the years that follow, the little cherry tree watches over the family as the couple have children, and then grandchildren. Young Naomi makes the cherry tree her special friend, and the tree's branches shelter her as she plays. But one day, war breaks out between the two countries, and the family is sent to an internment camp away from the coast. And though Naomi often dreams of going home, the dream fades as the years go by. The little tree is left behind to mourn its loss. For many years the cherry tree sends out a song of love and peace that reaches Naomi only in her dreams. But the insects and small animals hear the song, and on the wind they send back their own messages to the tree, assuring it that Naomi is safe and that one day she will return. And when she does, the tree will be waiting for her. Based on the World War II story of Naomi and Stephen in Naomi's Road, Naomi's Tree is a poetic story about enduring love and its almost mystical power to heal the spirit.

The Rain Ascends

The Rain Ascends
Author: Joy Kogawa
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 234
Release: 2003
Genre: Alberta
ISBN: 9780143013204

In Joy Kogawa's masterful third novel, a middle-aged woman discovers that her father, a respected Anglican priest, has long been a sexual abuser of boys. Originally published to critical acclaim in 1995, The Rain Ascends has been revisited by the author, with substantive additions to the end of the narrative that bring to fruition the heroine's struggle for forgiveness and redemption. As a middle-aged mother, Millicent is confronted with the secrets of her father's past as she recalls certain events in her childhood-a childhood that, on the surface, was a blissful one. Disbelief turns to confusion as she faces up to the sins of her father and wrestles with a legacy of lies, silence and her own embattled conscience. In The Rain Ascends, Joy Kogawa beautifully sifts the truth from the past and the sinner from the perceived saint. The result is a sensitive, poetic, yet searing depiction of the wounds left by abuse and the redemption brought by truth.