Joy Kogawa

Kogawa wears her Order of Canada medal. Photo File, York's Daily Bulletin.

Joy Kogawa was born in Vancouver in 1935--not a good time for a Canadian of Japanese descent. After Japan bombed Pearl Harbour in 1941, Canada took action against Japanese Canadians, breaking up their families by sending them away from the coast to live in camps in the BC interior.

As a person of Japanese descent, Kogawa's life was disrupted by the wartime policy, when internees were also deprived of their property, including the means of making a living. Few families returned to their hometown of Steveston.

In her well-known novel Obasan (1981), Kogawa tells the story of a ruptured family. The book portrays the wrenching heartbreak of a child who is too young to understand why her family is being torn apart, and the adult that little girl becomes. Obasan received the Canadian Authors' Association Book of the Year Award. It also won the Books in Canada First Novel Award as well as appearing on the American Library Association Notable Book List. In 2006, the Literary Review of Canada published a list of Canada's 100 most important books , and the novel appeared on this list as well.

Her other novels are Itsuka (1992) and The Rain Ascends (1995). In 2009 she published a memoir, Gently to Nagasaki. The same year, she delivered the Asian Heritage Lecture at York University, along with the launch of the Virtual Museum of Asian Canadian Cultural Heritage. She has worked to educate Canadians about the historic injustices done to Japanese Canadians, who finally received a formal apology from the Canadian government in 1988.

Joy Kogawa is also an accomplished poet with several volumes of work to her credit. She has also written books for children. Naomi's Road (1986) was made into an opera in 2005. This author has been showered with awards and has worked at many Canadian universities as a Writer-in-Residence.

In Vancouver, Joy Kogawa's childhood home in Marpole, now called Joy Kogawa House, is currently home to writer-in-residence Susan Crean.