Title: Obasan
Author: Kogawa Joy

tHad 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.
tIf 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 her uncle the readers can understand these two unique character’s values. Also the author and her uncle had marvelous conversation, with deeper meanings that will make the reader wonder.
tOne part I disliked in this part is the confusing time and setting, I often go over and reread the last part, before moving on to make sure I am reading the author’s later life, rather than her early life, where all the conversation between her uncle started.

I hadn't known about the treatment of Japanese Canadians during WW2! A painful, personal book. The protagonist's older family members felt especially real.

I kept getting thrown out by Kogawa's style, though. It feels, um, very Creative Writing course-ish? It makes sense that she writes poetry -- I'm not at all saying there's something wrong with her style, but I guess I'm not very good at reading poetry.

Another book recommended by my professor that was on my shelf but I had never read. I hadn't realized that Canada had interned its Canadian residents AND refused to let them return to Vancouver until a decade after the war. A depressing book but eye-opening.

This is the first time I've read Obasan, a novel that is heart-wrenching in the pain it depicts and all the things it doesn't say. I can see why it had such an impact when it was first published as the first book which described the exile of Japanese Canadians. It is shocking and devastating to read of the pain that existed in my own country during the war and that was continued purposefully for so many years afterwards by a government fuelled by racist fears. For me, this book is a reminder of the need to maintain the rights of all, especially minorities in Canada. But it is also a compelling and poetic examination of silence and stories and the need for words to express even the most painful realities.

The book "Laugh Out Loud" by James Patterson is probably objectively the worst book that I have ever read. It is a hilariously badly written novel with awful, surface-level references, stilted dialogue, incomprehensible character motivations, and a thunderstorm of cliches. However, the book managed to live up to its title by being hilariously awful. I enjoyed every second of reading it.

My point is that, without even considering whether a book is objectively good or not, the worst thing a book can be is boring. Any second of my time that I spend reading a book wherein I'm not entertained in some way, or at least intellectually stimulated, is time wasted.

That is why Obasan is the worst book that I have ever read.

Another thing that I would like to mention about Laugh Out Loud is that it never assumes that it's anything that it's not. It doesn't think that it's some sort of timeless masterpiece. It knows that it's a book created for 5-year-olds to read (or get read to), laugh a little, then forget about for the rest of their lives.

Something I hate in a book is a lack of self-awareness. A book assuming that it's something it isn't is a detestable thing for a book to do.

That is why Obasan is the worst book that I have ever read.

These two problems, boredom and lack of self-awareness, create the foundational reasons as to exactly why I despise Obasan so much.

First of all, the book is boring. There isn't a single moment of the book where I was not absolutely miserable. I was forced to read it for a school assignment, as were many others apparently, and in order to complete it on time, I had to read eight pages a day. That was literally it. I love reading, and I can often read hundreds of pages at a time, keeping me up into the early hours of the morning desperately turning page after page to find out what will happen next. Eight pages a day should have been no problem.

There were times when I only managed to read two before being brought to tears out of pure boredom. The book manages this incredible feat of a supreme lack of enjoyability by using several tacticts. The main tactic the book uses is the almost humorously awful monologues the book goes on, which are filled with """"""""Meaningful Symbolism""""""". These include passages such as "The doctor is angry and British and his children take aspirin to rid themselves of the headaches," (note that I am paraphrasing, I do not have the book on me right now), which makes even less sense in context, believe it or not. That's not even the worst the false symbolism gets, there are passages about babies with yellow feces and dream sequences involving robot dogs and naked women lying in the mud. I could see my English teacher desperately grasping at straws in an attempt to make sense of the "symbolism", not realizing (in the words of a wise man on the internet) that the curtains were just blue. Except, the book desperately wants you to think that the curtains are blue for a reason, but is so bad at it that literally everyone in my class managed to see through it.

The sheer number of pages taken up by this "symbolism" creates a general atmosphere that nothing that you are reading is necessary for understanding the story, creating what is essentially glorified filler. Would you enjoy spending a large portion of your life reading glorified filler? Exactly. The book is boring.

Even then, the rest of the story isn't interesting in the slightest. The book constantly shies away from showing the horrors of war that its entire purpose is to show. Instead, the book focuses on conversations. And people doing boring, normal things, like baking bread, and having conversations. This would be fine if it was trying to show normal people living normal lives, only to have that life suddenly snatched from them in the horrors of war, but the thing is that these people don't act like normal people. The characters, rather than being one-note, are zero-note. They have no personality whatsoever. So, the book is about people with no personality living normal lives, with around a third of the book being taken up with meaningless monologues, with maybe twenty pages that are actually about the horrors of war. Sound fun?

However, all of this is done with a supreme lack of self-awareness. It genuinely seems to think that it's some sort of masterpiece, standing on a soapbox and making a meaningful statement on racism in Canada. Except, for all of the reasons that I went over above, it very clearly isn't.

However, all of this is overshadowed by how much of a missed opportunity this book is. It could have been something really special and drew awareness to an oft-overlooked historical event that Canada is still seeing the ramifications of today. Instead, the author took it as an opportunity to make a book that looks like it's that but is actually a series of self-indulgent gibberish rants sprinkled with personality-less characters.

THAT is why Obasan is the worst book that I have ever read.

1/10

Wow this is late. Blame school.

Ok, here we go.

Looking at what's going on in the world today only furthers my belief that people need to educate themselves. Your education system, wherever you are, will only be the best if it's a course related to STEM. Sure you maybe lucky like me and have strong departments in all the other fields of education, but sadly, departments unrelated to STEM often get the smallest budget. What's the point in building advanced technology if you're just going to be putting it into the hands of an ignorant person?
So until, the education system whips itself back into shape, your intelligence in regards to your morals, thoughts, beliefs, knowledge, philosophy, etc is completely in your hands. Being ignorant is no longer an option.

So why this rant? Well, fires are going off all over the world. Societal Justice is being wielded like a sword, the wielder having forgotten the original purpose of the sword. Anger is bubbling as atrocities are met over and over and over again with bureaucratic papers, military threat, censorship, or full on suppression. The people are fed up and frustration shows in many ways.

The events on going today may be different from the events that occurred during WW2 in Canada but the emotions that ripple through the people are no different and, if left unattended, could result in another calamity that gets simplified into printed texts and blurred photos.

Many of us may feel lost. Knowing enough to understand what's wrong and right but not enough to stand firm to ideals or help out. That horrid muddy in between place that ends up sinking us faster then those around us. This helplessness. This almost exhaustion of a reader is found in Naomi, the young child whose story we unfurl.

Being to young to fully understand what's going on, Naomi watches silently as the place she once called home (Vancouver, Canada) rejects her as first Canadian, then human. Split away from her father, she is sent with her brother and aunt to one of the many designated places given to Japanese families during WW2. We watch as this silent child grows up in more silence till, at age 30, she becomes unable to move on. Sure the pages of her story turn, but there are no words to read. They have all been pushed down deep into her childhood stories that once came to life in the comfort of her mother's hands and father's protection.

Obasan teaches the reader many things. The most important being how silence sometimes does more harm then good. How many times have your parents told you not to bring attention to yourself? How many times have you kept your opinions/views to yourself for the good of others? How many times have you kept still as you watched the world burn? I'm sure many of us have been through some life experience that hushed our voice for a time, many go through it every day. It digs itself deep within you making it almost undetectable until you open your mouth. The power of the voice to challenge its owner's fate is what democracy was built upon. But somewhere along the line, we've forgotten the responsibility that comes with democracy. It's almost as if our voices are being shackled to this giant demon that democracy has become. Being pulled along instead of working as a team of husky dogs, pulling the sled containing democracy.

Now I'm not telling you to go and start yelling for justice or to join some political party. No of course not. But silence can also be another form of ignorance. Some choose silence as a result of constant observation. Their mind becoming their voice. Yet many more choose silence as either the easy way out or because they do not know enough. There is no shame in choosing to do so. It is better then creating false ruckus. But silence can drive a person mad.

Educate.Educate.Educate.Educate.Educate.Educate.Educate.Educate.Educate.
Question everything.
Use your voice, but use it wisely.

Kogawa's writing plucks sharp chords in the reader. There were many times when I wondered why we never went into much detail about the Japanese Internment or the Aboriginal Re-Education in school. Was is because of shame? Well, shouldn't it be shameful? Shouldn't it be taught as an everlasting reminder when we didn't use our voice properly? When we didn't care? Naomi's story plays out much lighter in comparison to most other's during the Internment but that doesn't mean that she remained unaffected. Her distance from the horrors was Kogawa's way to tell the reader that even those who are young, unrelated, or distant from the issue are affected by it.

There were some issues that I had with the book because I did wish it gave more detail to the actual events that occurred in the Internment Camps. Having the distance was needed but it also made it hard to understand what exactly happened. Also, there were many times where the literary style of the story did not blend well to the factual details the book talked about. There was a clear distinction of story from fact making it hard to be pulled into the story.

Regardless, it is a book that sparks conversation as I have done above.

This was a heartbreaker, but beautifully written, and such an eye-opener about how Canada treated its citizens of Japanese ancestry. Really horrifying—I knew about the U.S. and the internment camps, but this was a bit of a shock, with second and third generation Canadians forced to give up all their possessions and their homes and relocate to shantytowns and perform forced labor. Kogawa was originally a poet, though, and it shows. Recommended.

True rating: 4,75

This broke me.

I don't know what exactly got to me the way it did. Was it the writing style, the narrative, the past, or the present? I cannot say. But when I arrived at the last three chapters, I felt so hollow and devoid of everything. And then I felt hate bubble up because the characters were never allowed to show it. To understand it.

I wish I hadn't picked this book to read, even though it was phenomenal. I wish I had checked about its trigger warnings and the explicit contents. Make sure you take a look, before deciding to read it.

This was a very difficult book to read, considering my father and his family were sent to the camp at Lemon Creek in British Columbia, where his sister eventually died at a very young age of pneumonia. That has caused me to take a great interest in the lives of Japanese Canadians in World War II, and why I picked up this book.

My only issue with the book was that sometimes it was confusing as to which time period it was in as it jumps back and forth between circa 1943 and the "present", however it kept me engrossed to the very end and had some very powerful statements that hit me hard.

Overall a good read.

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 pages of the novel. Juxtaposed with the passive, complacent attitudes depicted throughout the rest of the novel, it completely overwhelmed me. I highly recommend this book.

‘Bu soğuk ülkede, hangimiz nereden geliyoruz ki zaten? Ah Kanada... Kabul edilsin veya edilmesin, oradan geliyoruz işte, oradan geliyoruz. Aynı topraktan, sümüklüböceklerden, balçıktan, bataklıklardan, dallardan ve köklerden. İnsanlarını yabani ot gibi koparıp yol kenarına fırlatan ülkeden geliyoruz.’
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Japonya- Kanada arasında 1800lü yıllarda başlayan sıkı bağ 2. Dünya Savaşı’nın başlamasıyla sekteye uğradı. İlk başta sesi yavaş yavaş çıkan homurdanmalardı bunlar. Pearl Harbor sonrası ise güçlü bir gürültü başladı.
Yıllardır Kanada vatandaşı olarak yaşayan Japon kökenli halk birdenbire göz önünden kaldırılmaya çalışılan eşyaya dönüştürülmeye başlandı.
İstedikleri işte çalışma hakları ellerinden alındı, mal varlıklarına el konuldu, sürüldüler veya sınır dışı edildiler.
İşte o süreçte paramparça olan bir aileyi okuyoruz ‘Obasan’da.
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Joy Kogawa, geçmişi yer yer şefkatle anıyor ama kırgınlık ve kızgınlık öyle baskın ki... Günümüzün sosyal haklar konusunda imrenilen ülkesi Kanada’nın, çok da dillendirilmeyen gerçekliklerinden de bahsediyor cesurca.
Bir çocuğun annesinden ayrı kalmasının bıraktığı o derin çukura gömüyor anlattıklarını.
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Etkilenerek okuduğum bu kitabın çevirisi Tugay Kaban’a ait iken; kapak tasarımı Harun Tan çalışması ~

4.25 stars
A starkly beautiful, melancholic, and painful story of the experiences of Japanese-Canadians during WWII and after by the Canadian government and Canadian society.

Throughout the text the themes of grief, silence, racism (systemic, individual, and everything in between), memory, family history, healing and hiding, activism and justice, and war and peace are masterfully explored with deep and unbreakable interconnections.

I particularly appreciated the juxtapositions of Aunt Emily and (Aya) Obasan, and of Naomi and Stephen. These comparisons (and others) allowed the reader to explore different ways to surviving and responding to the traumas of the past, without a sense of which is "right." Obasan's silence and anonymity speaks volumes throughout the text, and the lengths she goes to protect her niece and nephew are proof of her strengths.

Recognizing that this is Obasan and Naomi's story, I wish additional time had been devoted to their family's time and experiences in Vancouver before they were forcibly relocated to the ghost towns and separated.

As well,  though I recognize that the atomic bombs in Nagasaki and Hiroshima were absolutely horrific and a key piece of the WWII and Japanese-Canadian experiences, I wish that the bombs weren't necessarily the explanation for Naomi's mother's continued disappearance. It may have been more surprising and shocking to the 1981 audience (who's temporal connection was closer and stronger) than the 21st century audience who has seen so many references to these horrors as a catch-all for character pain and theme exploration. That said, Kogawa handled these scenes and that reveal masterfully.  

Overall, the writing and slow, quiet storytelling was extremely well done and I'm so glad I finally read more about this shameful part of Canada's history. Knowing that the author had to draw on her own experiences of internment as a Japanese-Canadian, makes this story all the more powerful and real.