Racism, Trauma,

& Survival in Different “Languages”--

Obasan Chaps 5-14Kate Liu

Outline

[Last week] Enemy Aliens vs. Survivors1.Discussion Questions2.Memory and Language:

• Memory of Different Forms -- Aya Obasan, Aunt Emily, and Naomi

• Different Languages

3.Family Togetherness vs. Fragmentation 4.Wartime Examples of Racism

• [Children’s] Responses to Trauma • [Adults] Emily’s

Obasan: Time Line & Plot (1)

1972

|

| 1954

Chap 1: 8/9 1972 --1954 Granton 1951(the

bombing of Nagasaki) — Chap 2: 9/13, 1972 Uncle’s

death Chap 3: back to Obasan’s house,

question about the mother Chap 4: memories of the family

(photos and stone bread) Chap 5: Aya Obasan in the attic,

memory as spider

Obasan: Time Line & Plot (2)

1972

|

|

1941

Chap 6: nightmare Chap 7: Emily’s package—her last

visit and the question if Naomi wants to know “everything”

Chap 8: Obasan lady of the leftovers

Chap 9: starts to remember- from the photo to memories of the house p. 50 —

Chap 10: Momotaro Chap 11: episodes of the white

chicken and Old Man Gower

Obasan: Time Line & Plot (3)

1942 train to Slocan

Chap 12: —separation starts—the mother first;

Chap 13: fear; preparation to leave;

Chap 14: bath with Obasan (78); Emily’s diary (-110)

Chap 15: leaving for Slocan Chap 16: the trip to and arrival at

Slocan, Stephen’s reaction Chap 17: Nomura-Obasan,

Goldilock

Obasan: Time Line & Plot (4)

1942

| 1943

(attend school)

Chap 18: Grandma Nakane’s death, wake and cremation,

Chap 19: Uncle back, questions about the father, Stephen out of his cast

Chap 20: back to school, vegetable garden, Rough Lock Bill, Kenji and the red insect

Chap 21: Naomi’s drowning

Obasan: Time Line & Plot (5)

1943

|

1945

1945 -- to Alberta Ethridge, and then Granton, Barker Farm--

Chap 22 -- experiences of hospital and deaths (chicken, kitten)

Chap 23 -- bathing Chap 24 -- father back Chap 25 -- prayer before

departure; Chap 26 -- leaving Slocan

Discussion Questions

1. Memory and Language: How do Emily, Naomi and Aya Obasan deal with their grief, and memories of separation and unfair treatments?

2. Family and Fragmentation: How is the extended Japanese family depicted? Where do we see them broken apart?

3. Racism: Examples of Wartime Racism? The government’s justification and the responses to it of children or adults?

I. Memory and Language

Obasan Aya Live with the past

• The house is old, items like her bodily parts, the house like “[3] her blood and bones” (15)

• the attic: ([5] 25)• her “ancient” body like “long extinct vocalnoes” ([14]78)• “The language of grief is silence. She has learned it well, its

idioms and nuances. Over the years, silence within her small body has grown large and powerful” (14)

Protective Silence;

(Aya vs.) Emily How different my two aunts are. One lives in sound, the other

in stone. Obasan’s language remains deeply underground but Aunt Emily, BA, MA, is a word warrior. She’s a crusader, a little old gray-haired Mighty Mouse, a Bachelor of Advanced Activists and General Practitioner of Just Causes. ([7] 32)

Emily: wrote letters; changed “Japanese race” to “Canadian citizen” (33)

“We’re gluing our tongues back on. . . . We have to deal with this while we remember it. If we don’t we’ll pass our anger down in our genes. It’s the children who’ll suffer” (36).

Aya vs. Emily

Aya Uncle: Gratitude ([7]42) “everyone someday dies”

([8] 44-45) Photos everywhere –

shows Naomi her mother’s photo

Emily Presents her a parcel of

letters, documents, her diary “The past is the future”

([7]42)

Naomi: -- Why not leave the dead to bury the dead (42)-- memories are to be forgotten (45)-- All right, Aunt Emily, all right! The house then…([9] 50)

Two Different Languages

Obasan Aya’s: stony silence; remains deeply underground

Speech hides like an animal in a storm (3)

Aunt Emily– a word warrior, a bulldozer, with “army, navy, air force” of letters (32)

-- “To attend its voice… is to embrace its absence. But I fail the task. The word is stone.”-- “My fingers tunnel through a tangle of roots till the grass stands up from my knuckles…I search the earth and the sky with a thin but persistent thirst” (3)-- Emily crusading still, while the others “seek the safety of invisibility” ([7] 32)

One lives in sound, the other in stone. One lives in sound, the other in stone.

Naomi’s Denial of History – chap 7

"The very last thing in the world I was interested in talking about was our experiences during and after World War II" (33);

"Crimes of history,...can stay in history. What we need is to concern ourselves with the injustices of today" (41);

"Why not leave the dead to bury the dead?" "Life is so short,...the past so long. Shouldn't we turn the page and move on?" (42).

Naomi’s process of remembering

Performing yearly ritual without knowing why

Photographic memories –connected to the past thru’ fragments (53)• -- of the two families, of the father and uncle, • -- of herself and her mother two languages

of the eyes, two cultures ([9] 47)

2. Family Togetherness vs. Fragmentation

The Past in Naomi’s memory:

Chap 9: Photograph • two languages; • two spaces -- home and outside chap 11

The house and life in Vancouver• bathing -- burning but relaxing water; Grandma’s

resourcefulness (48-49)• a collage of images (50) • Mother, father and Stephen Naomi and goldfish• The past—drowning whirlpool, Naomi as a fragment of

fragments

Two languages of eyes Racial Differences Chap 11 – the mother’s matter-of-fact eyes (59); “negation of good

in the past tense” Old Man Gower episode:

• Her powerlessness – like “a small animal” cannot move, cannot say no. (63; snow white 64)

• Negative consequences of silence: Noami’s quietness; • Her complicity –”terror and exhilaration” wecomes it (65)• her sense of guilt

Old Man Gower – the one to take over their house (Chap 12 )

Question 2: the significance of the story Momotaro? Both Canadian and Japanese; family care and Maintaining honor in

displacement;

The other fairy-tales: • Snow White: end of Chap 11• Humpty Dumpty end of Chap 15; • Goldilock chap 17, • All revisions of the fairy-tales show the child’s way of

apprehending racism and displacement• the chicken episode Chap 11

Other Influences of Racism

The family dispersed – Noami’s sense of guilt and fear ([13] 73) Her repression of past memories Noami’s dreams: first one [6] 28-30; second

one: [11] 59-

3. Examples of Wartime Racism

Wartime Racism

e.g. Against Jews in Germany and everywhere,

e.g. In-between mainland Chinese and Japanese

Canadian Government’s Rhetoric 4/8 newspaper – Japanese naval officers

(94)

Nisei as "enemy aliens"; prison camps as "Interior Housing

Projects"

Canadian Government’s Rhetoric In 1944, Prime Minister William Lyon

Mackenzie King claimed that it was “the sound policy and the best policy for the Japanese Canadians themselves … to distribute their numbers as widely as possible throughout the country where they will not create feelings of racial hostility” (qtd Miki 40).

Emily’s Diary

Confiscation Evacuation – Sam sent away; the Morii gang 91 3/2, 1942 everyone has to leave; curfew for

Japanese, men sent away in unheated cars, Treated like animals 100; Jap images 101 Emily bound for Toronto, Aya and the kids for

Slocan 108-109

Different Responses

• Naomi and Stephen’s responses 80-81; 89 Stephen limp

• Nisei’s p. 81; 86 keeping faith to being bitter. Emily—becomes numb, lost, keeps writing and making sense of what’s happening …

• Mark ‘s letter – about music and flowers 105

Survival and Fragmentation

Beginning of Chap 15 “We are the hammers and chisels in the hands of

would be sculptors, battering the spirit of the sleeping mountain. We are the chips and sand, the fragments of fragments tha fly like arrows from the heart of the rock. We are the silences that speak from stone. We are the despised. . .

We are those pioneers who cleared the bush and the forest with our hands, the gardeners tending and attending the soil with our tenderness . . .

References

Japanese Canadian Internment http://www.lib.washington.edu/subject/Canada/internment/intro.html

A History of the Japanese-American Internment http://www.fatherryan.org/hcompsci/

Analysis of two apology letters http://www.imdiversity.com/villages/asian/Article_Detail.asp?Article_ID=3267

Note

Kinjiro Ninomiya，也就是中文的二宮金次郎，二宮金次郎原名二宮尊德，一七八七年出生於今日本神奈川縣，二宮十四歲時喪父，十六歲喪母，因為貧困而兄弟離散，獨自過著辛苦的日子。二宮深知只有讀書才能使人生豐盛，並能以所學解決問題，於是每天勞動之餘，挑燈夜讀，每每通宵達旦，終能藉所學得的知識為民眾謀福利，深受民眾敬仰。

Japanese Internment in Canada

The turn of the century: early immigrants (beginning; 8:00-11:40)

1941, December 7--the bombing of Pearl Harbor 1942--evacuation of Canadian Japanese (Nikkei)

from the Pacific Coast--the great mass movement in the history of Canada (Obasan 92-93)--21,000 people moved (clip 2 13:00 – 17:30 confiscation; clip 3 relocation)

1945-1949 deportation or 2nd relocation right to vote and return to B.C. (clip 4 22:00-) (Also chap 14 of the novel)