Joy Kogawa

Obasan

Tells the story of Japanese Canadians who try to get the Canadian goverment to return the property that was confiscated when they were sent to internment camps at the beginning of World War II

Itsuka

A brand new edition of a children's classic. First published to critical acclaim in 1986, 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. This new edition is based on an expanded version of the story published in Japan. In it, Kogawa brings in more of the extended family and answers the question so often asked by fans of the original book: What happened to Naomi's mother? With a historical note and a new ending, cover, and interior drawings by popular children's illustrator Ruth Ohi, this book will be an absolute must for owners of the original as well as a whole new generation of young readers. Praise from Publishers Weekly: "Kogawa, who wrote the adult book Obasan, begins this with a letter to children, explaining the background for Naomi's story -- that Canada was at war with Japan and so all Japanese-Canadians were placed in internment camps Naomi's point of view is singularly childlike -- for her, war means missing her parents and not understanding why another girl, Mitzi, dislikes her... This is not a novel that bears malice for the injustices of the war, but relates instead a tale of unquenchable human spirit, undaunted by prejudice and unable to let go of hope."

Naomi's Road

Staying behind on an island after three summer people have left, Heather wonders what there will be to do.

A Choice of Dreams

Selected Poems

Choice of Dreams

Gently to Nagasaki is a spiritual pilgrimage, an exploration both communal and intensely personal. Set in Vancouver and Toronto, the outposts of Slocan and Coaldale, the streets of Nagasaki and the high mountains of Shikoku, Japan, it is also an account of a remarkable life. As a child during WWII, Joy Kogawa was interned with her family and thousands of other Japanese Canadians by the Canadian government. Her acclaimed novel Obasan, based on that experience, brought her literary recognition and played a critical role in the movement for redress. Kogawa knows what it means to be classified as the enemy, and she seeks urgently to get beyond false and dangerous distinctions of "us" and "them." Interweaving the events of her own life with catastrophes like the bombing of Nagasaki and the massacre by the Japanese imperial army at Nanking, she wrestles with essential questions like good and evil, love and hate, rage and forgiveness, determined above all to arrive at her own truths. Poetic and unflinching, this is a longawaited memoir from one of Canada's most distinguished literary elders.

Gently to Nagasaki

A career-spanning volume that brings together new and selected works by an iconic voice in Canadian literature. From the Lost and Found Department, by the trailblazing Joy Kogawa, is a profound work of spare, trenchant, and haunting poems that lets us stay with the quietest qualities of beauty and the sublime. This essential volume brings together thrilling new work with selected poems from The Splintered Moon (1967), A Choice of Dreams (1974), Jericho Road (1977), Woman In the Woods (1985), and A Garden of Anchors: Selected Poems (2003). Kogawa’s poems here are evidence that our every vulnerability can open into vast channels of grace.

New and Selected Poems

From the Lost and Found Department

Dennis Foon

Lorraine Kimsa Theatre for Young People Theatre Archives (University of Guelph)

Young People's Theatre

Shawn Kerwin

Paula Wing

Young People's Theatre Archives

Naomi's Road tells the story of Naomi Nakane--a little girl with "black hair and lovely Japanese eyes and a face like a valentine"--And her Japanese-Canadian family during the 1940s, when Canada was at war with Japan. We folllow Naomi and her older brother Stepeh from their home in Vancouver to an internment camp in the interior of British Columbia, and then to a farm in Albert, seeing the effect of war through the eyes of a child growing up with the hardship and prejudice. Yet Naomi's adventures lead her to see the world with hope and understanding.

In Joy Kogawa's masterful third novel, a middle-aged woman discovers that her father, a respected Anglican priest, has long been a sexual abuser of boys. Originally published to critical acclaim in 1995, The Rain Ascends has been revisited by the author, with substantive additions to the end of the narrative that bring to fruition the heroine's struggle for forgiveness and redemption. As a middle-aged mother, Millicent is confronted with the secrets of her father's past as she recalls certain events in her childhood--a childhood that, on the surface, was a blissful one. Disbelief turns to confusion as she faces up to the sins of her father and wrestles with a legacy of lies, silence and her own embattled conscience. In The Rain Ascends, Joy Kogawa beautifully sifts the truth from the past and the sinner from the perceived saint. The result is a sensitive, poetic, yet searing depiction of the wounds left by abuse and the redemption brought by truth.

The Rain Ascends

Ruth Ohi

A cherry tree grown from the seed of the Friendship Tree in Japan comforts the Canadian-born granddaughter of the people who planted it, even after she and her family are interned during World War II and she grows up and forgets the tree.

Naomi's Tree

Lilian Broca

Joy Kogawa, internationally celebrated author of Obasan and The Rain Ascends, offers a feminist version of the biblical story of Lilith, the "first Eve." Illustrated by Lilian Broca, A Song of Lilith combines poetry and artwork in a powerful ode to truth, transformation, and homecoming.

Joy Kogawa

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