![]() ![]() Bin (which is short for Binosuke) uneasily walks about in life bearing the surname Okuma, which also doesn’t seem to fit him. That much of her autobiography seems relevant here.īut returning to Itani’s novel, Requiem, it is largely about the Japanese Canadian experience and the impact it has on the life of its main narrator, Bin Okuma, a Japanese Canadian visual artist.įor starters, there’s more than a few quirks to our main character, beginning with his name. Itani herself is of British Isles descent and is married to a Japanese Canadian - hence, the Itani in Frances Itani. With such thoughts filling my mind, I recently sat down and read Frances Itani’s novel, Requiem. In this day and age, we are no longer spoken for. Such an abrupt question is usually asked behind closed doors in our community, but because we have our own writers, we have our own sense of culture and history, and when non-JCs depict us in their short stories and novels, we understandably ask, ‘why’?Īfter all, JCs take a certain pride in their writers like Joy Kogawa, Roy Kiyooka, Shizuye Takashima, Roy Miki, Muriel Kitagawa, Pamela Sugiman, Hiromi Goto, Kerri Sakamoto, Ken Adachi, Gerry Shikatani, and Mona Oikawa, to name only a few. Why do non-Japanese Canadians feel compelled to write fiction about Japanese Canadians? ![]()
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