Joy Kogawa Livres

A young couple leaves Japan for the coast of Canada, bringing a cherry seed to plant in their new garden. During the years that follow, the little cherry tree watches over the family as the couple have children, and then grandchildren. Young Naomi makes the cherry tree her special friend, and the tree's branches shelter her as she plays. But one day, war breaks out between the two countries, and the family is sent to an internment camp away from the coast. And though Naomi often dreams of going home, the dream fades as the years go by. The little tree is left behind to mourn its loss. For many years the cherry tree sends out a song of love and peace that reaches Naomi only in her dreams. But the insects and small animals hear the song, and on the wind they send back their own messages to the tree, assuring it that Naomi is safe and that one day she will return. And when she does, the tree will be waiting for her. Based on the World War II story of Naomi and Stephen in Naomi's Road, Naomi's Tree is a poetic story about enduring love and its almost mystical power to heal the spirit.

On the 60th anniversary of the bombing that claimed Naomi's young mother in Obasan, Joy Kogawa revisits her second novel—Itsuka—now retitled Emily Kato In Obasan, Naomi's childhood was torn apart by Canada's betrayal of Japanese Canadian citizens during the 1940s. Years later, living quietly as a schoolteacher in the prairies, Naomi suffers the passing of the dear aunt and uncle who raised her, and her wounds are reopened. But Naomi's other aunt—the feisty Emily Kato—convinces her to move to Toronto and encourages her to become involved in the Japanese Canadian fight for redress. Politically charged and intimately poetic, Emily Kato tells the story of one community's struggle for justice, extraordinary commitment, and profound hope.

Winner of the American Book AwardBased on the author's own experiences, this award-winning novel was the first to tell the story of the evacuation, relocation, and dispersal of Canadian citizens of Japanese ancestry during the Second World War.

A career-spanning volume that brings together new and selected works by an iconic voice in Canadian literature. From the Lost and Found Department, by the trailblazing Joy Kogawa, is a profound work of spare, trenchant, and haunting poems that lets us stay with the quietest qualities of beauty and the sublime. This essential volume brings together thrilling new work with selected poems from The Splintered Moon (1967), A Choice of Dreams (1974), Jericho Road (1977), Woman In the Woods (1985), and A Garden of Anchors: Selected Poems (2003). Kogawa’s poems here are evidence that our every vulnerability can open into vast channels of grace.