Joy Kogawa

Joy Kogawa was born in Vancouver to Japanese immigrants. After the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, the Canadian government imprisoned thousands of Japanese Canadians, including Kogawa’s family, in internment camps in the country’s interior. After the war, Kogawa and her family relocated to Coaldale, Alberta. In the 1960s and 70s, Kogawa began to pursue a career as a poet. In 1981, she published Obasan, her first novel, which drew on her experiences during World War II. Obasan was a critical and commercial success; it was adapted into a children’s book and an opera, won the Books in Canada First Novel award and the Canadian Authors Association's Book of the Year, and in 1992 Kogawa published a sequel titled Itsuka. In 1986 she was made a member of the Order of Canada, and in 2006 she became a member of the Order of British Columbia. In 2010, the Japanese government awarded Kogawa the Order of the Rising Sun. Kogawa currently resides in Toronto.