Joy Kogawa
Joy Kogawa is a Canadian author born on June 6, 1935, in Vancouver, British Columbia. Her early life was profoundly impacted by World War II, particularly the internment of Japanese Canadians, which forced her family into a camp in Slocan shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. This experience of displacement and cultural loss deeply informed her literary work. Kogawa is best known for her novel "Obasan" (1981), which explores the psychological complexities of a woman coping with the aftermath of internment and the trauma of her family's experiences during the war.
Kogawa has also written poetry, with significant collections including "The Splintered Moon" and "A Choice of Dreams," where she incorporates elements of Japanese poetry. Beyond literature, she has contributed to public discourse through various roles, including as a staff writer in the Office of the Prime Minister. Throughout her career, she has received numerous accolades, including the Order of British Columbia and recognition from the Japanese government for her contributions to preserving Japanese Canadian history. Kogawa's works often resonate with themes of identity, loss, and resilience, making her a notable figure in Canadian literature.
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Subject Terms
Joy Kogawa
- Born: June 6, 1935
- Birthplace: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Author Profile
Writer Joy Kogawa grew up in the relatively sheltered environment provided by her minister father in Vancouver, Canada. That security was shattered with World War II relocation policies, which sent Japanese Canadians to internment camps in the inhospitable interior lands of Canada. Joy and her family were sent to an internment camp at Slocan just twelve weeks after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States also profoundly affected her. Upon release from the internment camp, Joy and her family resettled in Coaldale, Alberta in Canada.
As a young woman Kogawa attended the University of Alberta, the Anglican Women’s Training College, and the Conservatory of Music. She married David Kogawa on May 2, 1957; they had two children, Gordon and Deirdre. The years 1967 to 1968 seem to have been a transitional period in Kogawa’s life: her first book of poems, The Splintered Moon (1968), was published, she divorced David Kogawa, and she returned to college, attending the University of Saskatchewan, in those two years.
The next ten years of Kogawa’s life became increasingly productive. Her second collection of poems, A Choice of Dreams, was published in 1974. Some of the poems in A Choice of Dreams deal with her trip to Japan, and the short lines of verse demonstrate the influence of Japanese poetry like haiku. Kogawa worked in the Office of the Prime Minister in Ottawa, Ontario, as a staff writer from 1974 to 1976. A third collection of poetry, Jericho Road, was published in 1977. During this time Kogawa worked primarily as a freelance writer. Kogawa contributed poems to magazines and journals in Canada and the United States.
In 1981, Obasan was published. Widely acclaimed as one of the most psychologically complex and lyrically beautiful novels on the topic of Japanese Canadians’ internment and wartime experiences, Obasan continues to intrigue readers and critics alike with its powerful story of a silent, reserved woman, Megumi Naomi Nakane, learning of the fate of her family in Japan many years after the fact. Naomi’s experience of dispossession, relocation, and internment, as well as the loss of her parents, has made her ethnicity, her self-image, and her relationships with others deeply problematic. Published in 1986, Naomi’s Road retells the tale of Obasan in a manner intended for child readers.
Itsuka (1992) is Kogawa’s sequel to Obasan. Itsuka follows Naomi’s political awakening and the healing of her wounds from the past. Kogawa has also published A Garden of Anchors (2003), a book of selected poems, and A Song of Lilith (2000), which retells the story of Lilith, the mythical first partner to Adam. Kogawa published Gently to Nagasaki (2016), a memoir describing her spiritual pilgrimage. An augmented reality video game, East of the Rockies (2019), was created based on Obasan and Itsuka. It won the 2020 Canadian Screen Award. At eighty-eight Kogawa published From the Lost and Found Department (2023), a poetry collection that Kogawa called her last hurrah.
Kogawa became a member of the Order of British Columbia in 2006, and her childhood home became a Canadian landmark. In 2010, the Japanese government honored Kogawa with the Order of the Rising Sun, an award for exceptional military or civil merit, for her contribution to the understanding and preservation of Japanese Canadian history.
Bibliography
Cheung, King-Kok. Articulate Silences: Hisaya Yamamoto, Maxine Hong Kingston, Joy Kogawa. Cornell UP, 1993.
Davidson, Arnold E. Writing Against the Silence: Joy Kogawa’s “Obasan.” ECW Press, 1993.
Goldman, Marlene. “A Dangerous Circuit: Loss and the Boundaries of Racialized Subjectivity in Joy Kogawa’s Obasan and Kerri Sakamoto’s The Electric Field.” Modern Fiction Studies, vol. 48, no. 2, 2002, pp. 362-88.
Kanefsky, Rachelle. “Debunking a Postmodern Conception of History: A Defense of Humanist Values in the Novels of Joy Kogawa.” Canadian Literature, vol. 148, 1996, pp. 11-36.
Kruk, Laurie. “Voices of Stone: The Power of Poetry in Joy Kogawa’s Obasan.” Ariel, vol. 30, no. 4, 1999, pp. 75-94.
McGonegal, Julie. “Joy Kogawa Calls New Poetry Book Her ‘Last Hurrah’ at 88.” Broadview, 16 Jan. 2024, broadview.org/joy-kogawa-poetry-book/. Accessed 4 Oct. 2024.
Petersen, Nancy. Against Amnesia: Contemporary Women Writers and the Crises of Historical Memory. U of Pennsylvania P, 2001.