Joy Kogawa’s Obasan is an account of a Japanese-Canadian family’s experiences during World War II. The events are seen from the viewpoint of a young girl who watches her family disintegrate as it undergoes the relocation that occurred in both Canada and the United States. Although the experience depicted in Obasan is is achieved through the novel’s form and the latter through the symbols it employs.
The form of the novel parallels the three-stage structure noted by anthropologists in their studies of rites of passage. According to these anthropologists, a rite of passage begins with separation from a position of security in a highly structured society; proceeds to alienation in a deathlike state where one is stripped of screens of silence and secretiveness that have enshrouded her past, and reconciles herself with her history.
Kogawa’s use of motifs drawn from Christian rituals and symbols forms a subtle critique of the professed ethics of the majority culture that has shunned Naomi. In one example of such symbolism, Naomi’s reacquaintance with her past is compared with the biblical story of turning stone into bread. The bundle of documents—which of many Japanese Canadians—into a journey of heroic transformation and a critique of the majority culture.
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