Obasan Themes

They say that your dreams tell a lot about you: your hopes, wishes, and darkest fears. Dreams in Obasan definitely tell us a lot about Naomi. By working in a different language from everyday life,...

Be careful with your words, they're dangerous! In Obasan words are not just vehicles for communication. They can wound, they can heal, they can create new things, and they can tear those new things...

There sure is a lot of talk about houses in Obasan. There's a house in Vancouver, the one in Slocan, the hut in Granton. But why does it matter? Home is just where you put your stuff, right? For th...

It's prejudice's fault. Everything boils down to prejudice in Obasan. That's why Naomi loses her house, is sent to Slocan, toils in Granton, and overall has a pretty lame childhood. Throughout the...

Some people say that it's not good to live in the past, but Obasan begs to differ. Even though she doesn't want to, Naomi plunges into a re-examination of her past because of Aunt Emily's letters....

Author writes semi-autobiographical novel about a protagonist who loves books. Hmm. Where have we seen this before? It's no big surprise that Naomi develops a love for the written word throughout O...

You can't turn a page in Obasan without coming across death. We see more instances of death in this novel than we see Naomi playing with friends. But because the novel opens with the death of Naom...

Who gets to define a person's identity? Themselves? The government? Other people? In Obasan, the Japanese Canadian characters struggle to assert their own identity. They are called Japanese, enemie...