NEWS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: February 15, 2006
PUBLIC READING WITH AUTHOR JOY KOGAWA
TORONTO – Award-winning author and poet, Joy Kogawa is launching her novel about the Japanese Canadian redress movement, Emily Kato, with a public reading at the Church of the Holy Trinity on Thursday, March 9 at 5 pm.
Published by Penguin Canada, Emily Kato is the sequel to Kogawa’s classic novel Obasan in which the forced evacuations and internments of over 21,000 Japanese Canadians during World War II are described through the eyes of a young girl, Naomi Nakane.
Kogawa herself was six years old when she and her older brother and their parents were removed from their West 64th Avenue home in Vancouver in 1942 and sent to an internment camp in Slocan City, an abandoned ghost town deep in the interior of BC. For Kogawa, the seized family home became a symbol of lost hope and happiness and a central image in her award-winning Obasan, one of Canada’s best-loved works of fiction that is taught in schools and universities throughout Canada. Kogawa’s childhood home is also featured in Emily Kato and the children’s story Naomi’s Road, which is now touring as a Vancouver Opera production to 140 schools and community centres throughout BC.
Kogawa’s childhood home in Vancouver is now threatened with demolition and has just been added to Heritage Vancouver’s 2006 Top Ten Endangered Sites. Vancouver City Council unanimously passed a four-month demolition delay order for the house in November but that protection expires the end of March. TLC – The Land Conservancy of BC http://www.conservancy.bc.ca is spearheading a $1.25 million fundraising drive to purchase the historic house and establish it as a writers-in-residence centre. The aim of the residency program is to make the Joy Kogawa House a site for healing and reconciliation, enabling new writing about human rights and our evolving multicultural and intercultural society that make Canada unique in the world.
Kogawa worked with members of the Church of the Holy Trinity congregation on Japanese Canadian redress in the 1980s. “Miracles happen when the strong stand with the weak. Our community’s struggle derived much of its strength from the support of this justice-loving church. I’m grateful to be launching Emily Kato there,” said Joy Kogawa. Admission to the reading is free. The Church of the Holy Trinity is located at 10 Trinity Square (besides the Eaton Centre).
Donations to Save Historic Joy Kogawa House can be made to TLC at www.conservancy.bc.ca or (604) 733-2313.
For photographs and interviews with Joy Kogawa, contact:
Save Joy Kogawa House Committee: Anton Wagner (416) 863-1209; awagner@yorku.ca
TLC – The Land Conservancy: Heather Skydt (604) 733-2313; HSkydt@conservancy.bc.ca
www.kogawahouse.com