Writer Joy Kogawa will give a free lecture downtown tonight, putting her own internment as a Japanese-Canadian during the Second World War in a global context.
"She's someone who has educated, really, a generation of Canadians about the wartime treatment of Japanese-Canadians and the experiences of Japanese-Canadians themselves," said organizer Jordan Stanger-Ross, who teaches in the history department at the University of Victoria and helped organize the event.
"She's someone who lived through these events and now communicates them in sophisticated ways, so I think she's an exciting person to get to see."
The event will be held at the Legacy Art Gallery, 7: 30 to 9 p.m. Admission is free and a limited number of spaces are available by emailing thecitytalks. [email protected], as well as at the door.
Kogawa is a member of the Order of Canada and in 2008 won the George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award honouring an outstanding literary career in B.C.
When she was six, she and her family were forced from their Vancouver home and, like thousands of Japanese-Canadians, sent to an internment camp during the Second World War.
Her experience inspired her novel Obasan (1981), in which a middle-aged woman retells her experience as a young Japanese-Canadian girl during the war. The Literary Review of Canada has named it one of the 100 most important Canadian books.
Kogawa continued the story with a picture book and a second novel, 1992's Itsuka. Vancouver Opera also premièred a children's opera based on the same character in 2005.
For this lecture, Kogawa turns her attention to wartime Nagasaki and Nanking and the interconnectedness of urban tragedy. The format includes a question-and-answer period.
It's the third of three talks in the City Talks series, aimed at opening academic discussions to the general public in a downtown setting. The talks generally fill to capacity with an eclectic audience, Stanger-Ross said.
The two previous lectures focused on the experiences of Japanese-Canadians in B.C. prior to the war.
The next trio of City Talks, beginning Jan. 24, will explore what makes cities healthier.
