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Articles

Volume 12, Number 2 (1987)

Speaking the Silence: Joy Kogawa's Obasan

  • Gary Willis
Submitted
May 22, 2008
Published
1987-06-06

Abstract

The aim of Joy Kogawa's Obasan is political as well as aesthetic -- Kogawa wishes to articulate the silence that surrounds the treatment of Japanese-Canadians during the Second World War. The protagonist, Naomi, blends a Japanese attention to silence with a Western attention to words. Ultimately, it is words -- not so much the political, argumentative words of Naomi's aunt, but rather the enactment of love and faith" inherent to storytelling -- that harnesses the power to affect change. Yet it is not a triumph of the Western paradigm of words over that of the Japanese paradigm of silence, but rather an intricate, new-found interrelationship between the two in which the potential for change is discovered.