1. Fragmentary Identity and Survival
In Obasan Part II
Kate Liu

2. M a p
Image source:

3. Obasan: Time Line & Plot (1)
Chap 1: 8/9 1972
--1954Granton —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 (stone bread)
Chap 5: Obasan in the attic, memory as spider
1972 |
1954

4. Obasan: Time Line & Plot (2)
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
1972 |
1941

5. Obasan: Time Line & Plot (3)
1942 train to Slocan
Chap 12: —separation starts—the mother first;
Chap 13: preparation to leave;
Chap 14: bath with Obasan; 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

6. 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

7. Obasan: Time Line & Plot (5)
1943 |
1945
1945 to Alberta Ethridge, and then Granton, Barker Farm--
Chap experiences of hospital and deaths (chicken, kitten)
Chap bathing
Chap father back
Chap prayer before departure;
Chap leaving Slocan

8. Historical Reconstructions
Three ways of dealing with memories:
Obasan: ancient woman who stays in history
--can be consumed,
--can make use of the leftovers
Emily: “The past is the future” p. 42
Naomi: “Crimes of history Can stay in history” p. 41

9. How does Naomi start to remember?
Main topics:
children’s responses to racism and sexism,
their influence on Naomi’s sense of identity,
survival
Question 1:
How does Naomi start to remember?
What does she remember about the Vancouver house?

10. The Past in Naomi’s memory:
Chap 9: Photograph
two languages;
two spaces -- home and outside
The house and life in Vancouver
bathing -- burning but relaxing water; Grandma’s resourcefulness
a collage of images
Mother, father and Stephen Naomi and goldfish

11. Sexual Abuse and Racism
Question 3:
Is Naomi completely defenseless in her experience with Old Man Gower?
What does she feel about herself while being molested and afterwards?
How is Old Man Gower related to racism against the Japanese? Chap 12

12. Question 2: the significance of the story Momotaro?
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

13. The Children’s responses to racism (1)
A riddle: end of Chap 12; fear Chap 13;
Naomi: sense of guilt; end of Chap 11
Naomi’s nightmares: chaps 6; 11; 35
Naomi as a victim,
like a red insect chap 21,p. 140, King bird
little chicken chap 22
Naomi’s experience of death

14. The Children’s responses to racism (2)
Stephen (and the butterflies): end of Chaps 15 & 16
Kenji, his raft and his glasses
The boys’ Chap 22 violence against the white Chicken
Stephen, Sho and the other boys

15. Survival 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 . . .

16. The Adults’ adaptation
Rough Lock Bill Chap 21 slow can go p. 146
The uncle’s garden Chap 20
Local community Chap 23:
stores,
public bathhouse “like a hazy happy dream” (internal discrimination)
The return of the father

17. Conclusion
From dis-member
to remember
to re-member

18. Obasan: Time Line & Plot (6)
Chaps
experience at Granton: fly, dust, school, the swamp, missing the father, raising a frog
Chap 32: moving, starts to talk about the mother
Chap 33: Emily’s first visit
—1948—
1949 Father about to die—
1950 Father’s death; two bedroom house in town--
1951, Penny Barker
1954, Emily’s first visit ”Kodomo no tame” “they should be told”