Imatge de l'autor

Joy Kogawa

Autor/a de Obasan

17+ obres 1,809 Membres 36 Ressenyes 1 preferits

Sobre l'autor

Joy Kogawa was born in Vancouver, British Columbia in 1935 and graduated from high school in Coaldale, Alberta where her family was sent after WWII. Kogawa was made a Member of the Order of Canada. From 1983 to 1985, she worked with the National Association of Japanese Canadians to help those mostra'n més Japanese who had lost their land and possesions under the War Measures Act in 1942. Kogawa went on to study education at the University of Alberta and taught elementary school in Coaldale for a year. She then studied music at the University of Toronto followed by studies at the Anglican Women's Training College and the University of Saskatchewan. Kogawa has won awards for her book Obasan, including the Books in Canada, First Novel Award, the Canadian Authors Association, Book of the Year Award, the Periodical Distributors of Canada, Best Paperback Fiction Award, the Before Columbus Foundation, and The American Book Award (Bowker Author Biography) mostra'n menys

Inclou el nom: Joy Kogawa

Sèrie

Obres de Joy Kogawa

Obasan (1981) 1,429 exemplars
Itsuka (1992) 116 exemplars
Naomi's Road (1986) 93 exemplars
The Rain Ascends (1995) 58 exemplars
Naomi's Tree (2008) 36 exemplars
A Song of Lilith (2000) 26 exemplars
Emily Kato (2005) 7 exemplars
Jericho Road (1977) 5 exemplars
A Choice of Dreams (1974) 4 exemplars
Woman In The Woods (1985) 3 exemplars
The Splintered Moon 1 exemplars
Kogawa, Joy (About) 1 exemplars

Obres associades

From Ink Lake: Canadian Stories (1990) — Col·laborador — 126 exemplars
On a Bed of Rice (1995) — Col·laborador — 78 exemplars
The Big Aiiieeeee! (1991) — Col·laborador — 76 exemplars
The Canadian Children's Treasury (1994) — Col·laborador — 57 exemplars
One World of Literature (1992) — Col·laborador — 24 exemplars
Solo: Writers on Pilgrimage (2004) — Col·laborador — 11 exemplars

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Membres

Ressenyes

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 surprise, though I suppose it shouldn't have been, with second- and third-generation Japanese-Canadians forced to give up all their possessions and their homes, and relocate to shantytowns to perform forced labor. Kogawa was originally a poet, and it shows. Recommended.
 
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lisapeet | Hi ha 27 ressenyes més | Jun 18, 2023 |
Naomi is navigating her singledom in 1970s small-town Alberta when a family tragedy brings her closer to a past she's tried to forget. This leads her to reflecting back on her childhood experiences leading up to and inside of an internment camp for Japanese Canadians during World War II. As a child she could not know of the nuance or understand everything that was happening. She saw the tragedy on a different level: the rapid and eventually complete unravelling of safety, security and family. Some readers don't like the child's perspective in this novel, but in that alternative version we would be told how it was the children who would suffer most. This is the story of one suffering child. Now that she is revisiting her memories through adult eyes, with all the relevant documentation before her, new interpretations spring to light and the full story of forced internments and migrations emerges with its impacts on both the young and the old who were made its victims.

The writing style was sometimes an irritant for me, but the content is strong and the message is important. Surrendering to racist fear cost our country valuable unison in wartime, and the wrongs that were inflicted on this segment of our population weakened the moral ground from which our country fought World War II. There was clearly a hypocricy to fighting in freedom's name while we were stealing it away in our own backyard. It does not cancel out the heroism of our veterans or make wrong what we did right, but this story reminds how Canada's leaders and its people - how any people - can be fallible and wrong-headed when they let fear guide them.
… (més)
½
 
Marcat
Cecrow | Hi ha 27 ressenyes més | Jun 12, 2023 |
The novelized form of the author's grandmother's time spent in a Canadian Japanese internment camp. I found the book to be superficial. (Maybe it was supposed to be as Obasan was 5 years old when sent to the camp) Although a novel, I found several glaring statements about the U.S. internment(s) that had no basis in fact: 1) the US did not confiscate Japanese citizen's property (which they did) 2) "at least the US Japanese citizens had the Bill of Rights--correct, the had constitutional protection; little good it did them, though. I guess I found it a "light" book for such a serious subject. Maybe it was written for high-schoolers or YA???? Or the young girl experienced it at 5 years of age??? 320 pages… (més)
 
Marcat
Tess_W | Hi ha 27 ressenyes més | Aug 19, 2022 |
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
 
Marcat
Centre_A | Hi ha 27 ressenyes més | Aug 10, 2022 |

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Estadístiques

Obres
17
També de
9
Membres
1,809
Popularitat
#14,221
Valoració
3.8
Ressenyes
36
ISBN
55
Llengües
3
Preferit
1

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