In Joy Kogawa’s novel Obasan, the reader follows protagonist Naomi Nakane and her unintentional revealing of her Canadian-Japanese family’s victimization and discrimination during World War II. Set in 1972, the novel opens with the thirty-six-year-old middle school teacher and narrator Ms. Nakane. She first recalls visiting a ravine, in Granton, Alberta, with her uncle Isamu, her father’s half-brother. She simply calls him Uncle. The pair made the trip annually, beginning in 1954.
The school year begins. Naomi teaches in Cecil, Alberta. The inhabitants of this almost suffocatingly small town, are predominantly white Canadians. Hence, Naomi easily stands out and causes stares for her Japanese heritage. During class one day, she gets