My Road to Nagasaki Goes Through Nanking — Thoughts from a Work in Progress

Joy Kogawa

Abstract

Joy Kogawa states that her practie in giving talks is to to trust that what is required will be there. So I don't have an abstract. Sometimes this works. Sometimes it doesn't. Its risky. She might read from her work in progress, Gently to Nagasaki. The name of her talk refers to a chapter in which I discover that 'the road to Nagasaki goes through Nanking.

Joy Kogawa, née Nakayama, poet, novelist (b at Vancouver 6 Jun 1935). Joy Kogawa spent her early childhood in VANCOUVER. When she was 6 years old, she and her parents were among the thousands of JAPANESE CANADIANS forcibly removed from the coastal areas and interned during WWII. They were moved first to SLOCAN, in the interior of BC, and later to COALDALE, Alberta. Kogawa studied education at the UNIVERSITY OF ALBERTA and music at the UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO. She is celebrated for both her moving fictionalized accounts of the internment of Japanese Canadians, and her work in the Redress Movement to obtain compensation and reparation for her community. [From the Canadian Encyclopedia]