Speaking a Strange Language

Paper Summary:

This paper provides a review of Joy Kogawa's "Obasan and Chang-rae Lee's "Native Speaker" to determine how the Asian characters in these works find themselves isolated from their new lands and how they try to cope. A summary of the research is presented in the conclusion.

From the Paper:

"The emigration of large numbers of Asians to America is certainly not a new phenomenon, but the cultural processes that served to shape the individual experiences of the Asian community have been similar. Since the end of World War II, the United States has paid reparation and extended an apology to Japanese-Americans who were interred in camps following the attacks on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. Many observers may not know, though, that Canada used the same approach with its Japanese Canadians. Kogawa's Obasan is about Japanese Canadians and the numerous injustices they suffered during and after World War II. These forces served to isolate this family from the mainstream Canadian society, just as Henry Park's strict Korean heritage prevented him from being readily assimilated into the larger mainstream society and seeing things eye-to-eye with his influential father."

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