eaves Aunt Emily going to Toronto and everybody else moving to Toronto. In the end almost everybody ends up dying. The novel had many strengths and weaknesses. One strength that really got to me is the great detail in how the Japanese were treated, though they were Canadian citizens. Obasan also taught me a lot about the Japanese culture and background. I enjoyed learning that it was custom to take a bath with your family when you were younger. I also learned that the government took away the vehicles of the Japanese and auctioned them off, which really shocked me. Joy Kogawa also brought in a good insight about what the Japanese Canadians were really feeling and going through during these tough times. On the flip side there were also many weaknesses in the book Obasan. One major weakness was the failure to distinguish between present time and the past. There were to many times that I did not realize that Naomi had switched into a flashback or vice versa. This left me rereading many pages over. I also did not like the way that the novel would drag on. It sometimes failed to have much to do with the rest of the story, and is to wordy. I believe the story could have been told in about one hundred and eighty pages instead of the two hundred and fifty pages. I think that the novel could have also gone into a little more detail about the living conditions at Hastings Park, and also a political aspect of why this was happening to these people. All and all I would have to say this novel helped me a lot in understanding what happened during the Second World War. Before reading this novel, I would have to admit that I really did not even know this happened in Canada, which is really sad. I did know though that the Japanese in the United States were sent from the west coast, but did not realize that it reached the west coast of Canada. Obasan is a very good novel for anybody who did not know what happen...
