Rewrting the Myth of Absent Mother: Naomi's Self-Development in Joy Kogawa's Obasan

• Main Authors: Ya-yin Chang, 張亞尹
• Other Authors: Su-lin Yu
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2008
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/23018095632109299499

碩士 === 國立成功大學 === 外國語文學系碩博士班 === 96 === This thesis begins with the discussion of dominant theories about motherhood and its limitations within contemporary multicultural society. The second chapter explores the relationship between Naomi and her mother and how the absence of her mother eventually makes her a child who imagines herself as protagonists of various fairy tales. Chapter three emphasizes on the relationships between Naomi and her two aunts, Obasan and Aunt Emily and who lead to her spiritual reunion with her absent mother. Chapter four focuses on Naomi’s recovery of her absent mother and her reconnections with her surrogate mothers, Obasan and Aunt Emily. In the end, Naomi tells her story with her mother and her aunts as a reverse of the Demeter-Persephone myth. This thesis concludes that Joy Kagawa’s novel portrays how mothers of Japanese ancestry manage to protect their daughters during World War II, and how daughters attempt to understand the love of mothers within tangled memories, dreams, letters and photographs. With language that is full of imagery and metaphors, Kogawa not only depicts the story between mothers and daughters, but also reflects contradictory feelings of Japanese Canadians toward their motherland, Canada. Through the narration of Naomi, the novel reveals a profound and powerful representation of ethic motherhood that is different from dominant white motherhood.