Since its publication in 1981, Obasan by Joy Kogawa has taken on an important place in Canadian literature and the Asian-American literary canon more broadly. Reviewers immediately acclaimed the novel for its poetic power and its moving portrait of an often ignored aspect of Canadian and American history. Since then, critics have expanded this initial commentary to more closely examine the themes and imagery of Kogawa's work. Critical attention has focused on the difficulties and ambiguities of what is, in more ways than one, a challenging novel. The complexity of Obasan's plot, the intensity of her imagery, and the quiet bitterness of her protest challenge readers to wrestle with language and meaning in much the same way that Naomi must wrestle with understanding her past and that of her larger Japanese-Canadian community. In this sense, the attention Obasan has received from readers and critics parallels the challenges posed by the text: Kogawa's novel, one might say, demands to be taken into account, both intellectually and emotionally. Much of Kogawa's novel makes it difficult not only to read but also to classify or categorize. First, Obasan blurs the line between nonfiction and fiction. Kogawa draws from real letters and newspaper accounts, autobiographical details, and historical facts throughout the novel, but artistically incorporates this material into a clearly fictional work. Furthermore, Kogawa's narrative operates on multiple levels, from the individual and familial to the communal, national, political, and spiritual. Stylistically, the novel moves easily between the language of documentary reportage and richly metaphorical language, and between straightforward narrative and stream-of-consciousness exposition. This surprising variety of Kogawa's novel can, at times, become disconcerting and disturbing to the reader. But as many readers and critics have noted, Kogawa's style and method in Obasan also constitute the novel's unique strength. Kogawa writes in such a way that ambiguity, uncertainty, irony and paradox do not weaken his story but instead, paradoxically, become the keys to understanding it. The reader's experience of ambiguity in Obasan begins with the poetry-laden proem, which precedes the first chapter. , which opens with these words:There is a silence that cannot speak.There is a silence that does not speak.Does Kogawa intend these lines to introduce "silence" as a kind of character? The second line clarifies the first, or instead differentiates one silence from another, an involuntary mutism from a voluntary refusal to speak??