Asian Heritage in Canada

Fiction

Itsuka (reissued in 2005 as: Emily Kato)

Toronto: Viking, 1992.
9th floor PS8521 .O44 I8 1992
Toronto: Penguin, 1993
9th floor PS8521 .O44 I8 1993

Publisher's Synopsis (Penguin, 1993)

In Obasan, Naomi's childhood was torn apart by Canada's betrayal of Japanese Canadian citizens during the 1940s. Now, years later, Naomi's scars have left her fragile and uncertain. Quietly teaching school on the prairies, she watches as her family slips away from her. Then Naomi's Aunt Emily brings her to Toronto and encourages her to become involved in the Japanese Canadian fight for redress.

Fiction (Juvenile)

Naomi's Road

Drawings by Matt Gould.
Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1986.

New, expanded ed.
Drawings by Ruth Ohi.
Markham, ON: Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 2005.

Publisher's Synopsis (from Fitzhenry & Whiteside website)

... Naomi’s Road is the story of a girl whose Japanese-Canadian family is uprooted during the Second World War. Separated from their parents, Naomi and her brother Stephen are sent to an internment camp in the interior of British Columbia. For the young girl growing up, war only means that she can no longer return to her home in Vancouver, or see her parents. Told from a child’s point of view and without a trace of anger or malice, Naomi’s Road has been praised as a powerful indictment of the injustice of war and the government’s treatment of Japanese-Canadian citizens, both during and well after World War II.

Fiction

Obasan

Toronto: Lester & Orpen Dennys, 1981.
9th floor PS8521 .O44 O2 1981
Markham, Ont.: Penguin Books, 1983.
9th floor PS8521 .O44 O2 1983

Publisher's Synopsis (Penguin Books, 1983)

This powerful, passionate and highly acclaimed novel tell, through the eyes of a child, the moving story of Japanese Canadians during the Second World War.

Awards and Honours

1982 Books in Canada First Novel Award (Winner)
1982 Canadian Authors Association Book of the Year--Fiction (Winner)
1982 RUSA Notable Book (American Library Association)
1983 American Book Award, Before Columbus Foundation
1983 Periodical Distributor's Best Paperback

Fiction

The Rain Ascends

Toronto: Knopf Canada, 1995
9th floor PS8521 .O44 R35 1995

Publisher's Synopsis

The Rain Ascends tells the story of a woman -- the loyal, devoted daughter of an eminent and popular minister of the Church -- who discovers in middle age that the elderly father she adores has abused small boys throughout his life.

Awards and Honours

1996 Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize (Nominated)
1996 Alcuin Society Awards for Excellence in Book Design in Canada--Prose / General Trade category (1st prize, designer: Concrete Design Communications, Inc.)

Poetry

A Choice of Dreams

Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1974.

Poetry

A Garden of Anchors: Selected Poems

Oakville, Ont.: Mosaic Press, 2003.
9th floor PS8521 .O44 G37 2003

Publisher's Synopsis

This volume contains carefully selected poems from previously published books. It also includes a number of new poems, as well as re-writes of previously published works.

Poetry

Jericho Road

Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1977.
9th floor PS8521 .O44 J47 1977

Publisher's Synopsis

Whether writing of strangers or loved ones, of angst or anguish, of tenderness or despair, Joy Kogawa achieves a powerful fusion of images that adds special impact to her verse. These are poems arising from a finely tuned sensibility, poems crafted with exacting precision and weighted with emotional substance, and solidity. Jericho Road is a search for answers to the ancient question, "And who is my neighbour?"

Poetry

A Song of Lilith

Vancouver: Polestar Book Publishers, 2000. Poem by Joy Kogawa. Artwork by Lilian Broca.
9th floor PS8521 .O44 S62 2000

Publisher's Synopsis

According to biblical legend, Lilith and Adam were created out of clay to be equal partners in Eden. In this wise, contemporary and spirited retelling, Lilith flees Eden when the equality of her partnership with Adam is shattered by his desire for power and control.

Poetry

Woman in the Woods

Oakville, Ont.: Mosaic Press, 1985.

Selected Criticism and Interpretation

Adams, Bella. "Joy Kogawa, Obasan (1981)." In her Asian American Literature. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008.
9th floor PS508 .A8 A33 2008

Beauregard, Guy Pierre. "Asian Canadian Literature: Diasporic Interventions in the Work of SKY Lee, Joy Kogawa, Hiromi Goto, and Fred Wah." Ph.D. diss., University of Alberta, 2000.
Available from Proquest Dissertations and Theses

Darias-Beautell, Eva. "Obasan: Subject to/of Memory, Silence, (M)Others." In her Graphies and Grafts: (Con)texts and (Inter)texts in the Fiction of Four Contemporary Canadian Women. Bruxelles: P.I.E.-Peter Lang, 2001, 29-47.
9th floor PS8089.5 .W6 D37 2001

Davidson, Arnold. Writing Against the Silence: Joy Kogawa's Obasan. Toronto: ECW Press, 1993.
9th floor PS8521 .O44 O23 1993

Dobson, Kit. "Multiculturalism and reconciliation in Joy Kogawa's Obasan." In Transnational Canadas: Anglo-Canadian Literature and Globalization. Waterloo, Ont.: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2009, 91-103.
9th floor PS8071 .D62 2009

Goldman, Marlene. "Broken Letters: Obasan as Traumatic Apocalyptic Testimony." In her Rewriting Apocalypse in Canadian Fiction. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2005, 128-160.
9th floor PS8191.A65 G64 2005

Harris, Mason. "Joy Kogawa and Her Works." In Canadian Writers and Their Works. Fiction Series. Vol. 11, ed. Robert Lecker, Jack David and Ellen Quigley. Toronto: ECW Press, 1996, 137-211.
9th floor PS8187 .C375 v.11

Harry, Leanne Marie. "(Re)membering the Subject: The Politics of History, Memory, and Identity in Maria Campbell, Joy Kogawa, and Larissa Lai." M.A. diss., Simon Fraser University, 2000.
Available from Proquest Dissertations and Theses

Joy Kogawa: Essays on Her Works. Ed. Sheena Wilson. Toronto: Guernica, 2011.
9th floor PS8521 .O44 Z75 2011

Lee-Loy, Anne-Marie. "Asian American Mothering in the Absence of Talk Story: Obasan and Chorus of Mushrooms," chap. in Textual Mothers/Maternal Texts: Motherhood in Contemporary Women's Literatures, eds. Elizabeth Podnieks and Andrea O'Reilly. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2010, 317-331.
9th floor PS8089.5 .W6 T45 2009

Nguyen, Minh T. ""It Matters to Get the Facts Straight": Joy Kogawa, Realism, and Ojbectivity of Values," chap. in Reclaiming Identity: Realist Theory and the Predicatment of Postmodernism, eds. Paula M.L. Moya and Michael R. Hames-Garcia. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000, 171-204.
7th floor HM753 .R43 2000

Wong, Cynthia F. "Joy Kogawa." In Asian American Novelists: A Bio-Bibliographical Critical Sourcebook, ed. Emmanuel S. Nelson. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2000, [161]-167.
9th floor PS153 .A84 A825 2000

Xu, Wenying. "Enjoyment and Ethnic Identity in No-No Boy and Obasan." In Eating Identities: Reading Food in Asian American Literature. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2008, 18-36.
9th floor PS153 .A84 X8 2008

Yan, Qigang. "A Comparative Study of Contemporary Canadian and Chinese Women Writers." Ph.D. diss., University of Alberta, 1997.
Available from Proquest Dissertations and Theses

Links

Penguin Group (Canada) has information about several of Kogawa's books

Publisher Fitzhenry & Whiteside

An organization is trying to save Kogawa's childhood home in Vancouver. The site includes lots of photographs and historical information on the Japanese-Canadian relocation during the Second World War. Also included is a bibliography prepared by Chris Kurata. The Land Conservancy of BC has made an offer on the home and is raising funds to preserve the property.

Jane Evans Braziel's study guide to Obasan, "Spiritual Autobiography, Comparative Literature" on the ACLAnet website