namaste
...including the lack of food and the smell of manure. Naomi during this time was being sexually molested by her next door neighbor and did not tell anybody about this. Naomi seems resentful during the novel, as she comes across as a quiet little girl, who does not seem to interact with many people. Aunt Emily finally finds a place in Slocan for the family to go live, but just before they leave finds out her and her immediate family could go to Toronto. This leaves 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 i...