Janis Bridger and Lara Okihiro
Janis Bridger and Lara Jean Okihiro are the authors of the middle grade novel Obaasan's Boots. Bridger lives in Vancouver and Okihiro lives in Toronto. They are cousins.
Q: What inspired you to write Obaasan’s Boots?
LO: Our grandmother, Hisa Okihiro, inspired our book. She passed away in 2019, and at her funeral I gave a eulogy describing all the things she taught me from making sushi, canning peaches, and how the most delicious tomatoes are those fresh from the garden, to family mythologies and her stories about her experience as a Japanese Canadian.
Like 22,000 Japanese Canadians during WWII, and similar to what happened to 120,000 Japanese Americans at that time, Grandma – who was born in Canada and was a Canadian citizen – was considered an enemy and was uprooted from her home by the government, incarcerated, and forced to move east.
Some people from the Japanese Canadian community who were at the funeral said I should write the eulogy and Grandma’s stories down, and Janis especially thought recording Grandma’s stories in a book and for others was an important thing to do.
So, I guess, we wrote Obaasan’s Boots because we wanted to keep Grandma’s stories about our family’s difficult experiences so this history wouldn’t be lost, and so we could pass them on to others, like our own children. I guess we even hoped to inspire people to learn more about this past or to tell their own family stories.
Not forgetting this history seemed especially important because many people don’t know about the incarceration of Japanese Canadians, which was very much our experience as yonsei (fourth-generation Japanese Canadians) and as educators working with students – Janis in elementary schools on the west coast and me in universities and researching the JC internment living in the east.
Q: How did the two of you collaborate on the book? What was your writing process like?
JB: Although Grandma’s true life story serves as the beautiful framework of our story, Lara and I soon realized that not only had we both had different experiences with and perceptions of our family, but we had also heard different family stories.
When we were asked by our publisher, Second Story Press, to expand our picture book manuscript into a middle grade novel, this allowed us the space to delve deeper and more personally into our story.
We eventually decided that while using our existing framework, the two young granddaughter characters would tell their story, which closely mirrored our own real experiences.
It was such an honour that author Kyo Maclear celebrated that our historical story also includes the impacts that our family’s experience has had on later generations, including Lara’s and mine.
Logistically, the collaboration was complex! Thank goodness for technology and shared documents!
Because of our time zone differences (Lara lives in Toronto and I live in Vancouver) and our busy family schedules, we would write our sections independently, then meet at least twice a week online to go over what we wrote and continue to plan for upcoming parts of the story.
Seeing Lara’s icon on our document and seeing words magically appear and disappear on our shared document was almost magical! And then, of course, we read, reread, edited, read, and reread again together several more times!
LO: Definitely logistically complex! I think for both of us, part of the magic of it was also having so many opportunities to be in touch over video calls and thus to regularly be there for each other in our day-to-day lives.
The process of writing the book, and the way so many of our family members rallied around us to share their stories and what they knew of the past, really brought us all together, which was so fitting and necessary in the wake of Grandma’s passing. She really kept us all together, and I think we all experienced a loss of family connection when she was no longer there to hold us in relation.
Q: The writer Kyo Maclear said of the book, “Bridger and Okihiro fully inhabit the idea that ‘history is not only about the past’ by tracing its present-day echoes and reverberations.” What do you think of that assessment?
LO: Kyo’s endorsement of our book is absolutely beautiful. It’s thrilling that such a great and accomplished writer thinks so highly of Obaasan’s Boots!
I love that, for Kyo, Obaasan’s Boots captures how the past shapes and remains a force in the present. That was very much my experience, and I think Janis’s and many others’ experiences growing up Japanese Canadian, as it would be the case for many others in other communities.
The granddaughter-protagonists, Lou and Charlotte, very much reflect this experience. They overhear words like “evacuation” and “internment,” and they feel meaningful silences and how things are not talked about at home. It’s similar for Naomi in Joy Kogawa’s Obasan.
But just because people don’t talk about the past doesn’t mean it loses its power in the present. It’s more like the opposite is true: the stories and unaddressed aspects of the past can have a strong influence in the present. It’s psychoanalysis 101: the return of the things you don’t or can’t deal with in all kinds of unexpected ways.
As Lou and Charlotte spend the day with their grandmother in the garden, during which she tells them what had been for them the mystery of their family’s past, they also often reveal how this past – even though they didn’t know about it – has affected them.
They have certain family members who are especially driven to forget the past and to succeed and be accepted in the present. They notice how the Japanese language was lost across the community.
They reflect on how some of their family members seem compelled to take pictures, record, and keep all kinds of things, as though somewhere in their DNA they know the importance of things because they also know they could lose everything at any moment.
There’s also the casual racism that Lou and Charlotte, as mixed-race kids, experience that hearkens back to the past. Even the very fact of their births is the result of their Japanese family’s forced displacement and assimilation. So the past keeps echoing through them, even in beautiful ways, even as the history was so difficult and such a massive injustice.
Q: What do you hope readers take away from the book?
JB: In addition to the Japanese Canadian internment during WWII, Canada has had other instances of historical injustices and blatant racism that has impacted and continues to impact people today.
My hope is that this book inspires readers to learn more about historical events and injustices, so that they can ensure that racist policies never happen again. I hope that our readers are inspired to stand up against racism and celebrate diversity, because we are all human.
I also hope that our readers recognize that small kindnesses matter: a smile, a helping hand, lending gardening tools, a package of snowpeas, a bushel of peaches, or an opportunity. These can also have big impacts on people.
I would also hope that readers are inspired to talk to their family members, hear their own family stories, and embark on a journey, understanding that part of who they are is where they came from. Stories can disappear if they aren’t shared.
LO: Yes, exactly! It seems ever more urgent these days to try to keep stories alive, and to think deeply about how stories of the past echo in the present in meaningful ways for us and our fellow world citizens.
Like when president-elect Trump talks about using the Alien Enemies Act, which had been used to detain Japanese people in the US during WWII, against immigrants now.
My hope is that paying attention to the small but meaningful details of others’ lives, in the way that fiction or talking to elders can encourage us to do, might help us be more empathetic toward the well-being of each other and the planet.
Q: What are you working on now?
LO: I have an academic book in the works. It’s about hoarding and how novels depicting the wartime experience of Japanese Canadians often have obsessive collector characters, almost as a consequence of the community’s dispossession.
Unlike what happened to Japanese Americans, the government in Canada sold all the property owned by Japanese Canadians and effectively used the money to pay for the people’s incarceration, so there was really nothing left for the people to go back to.
I think this aspect of dispossession was really hard and painful for Japanese Canadians, which the novels almost can’t help but show.
I’m also working on another fiction about a mixed-race girl who doesn’t always know how she fits into the world and into her family, but when things go particularly wrong for her, she draws on both traditions – yosei-fairies and kami-spirits – and her ancestors to help her out.
This book is going to include some of our grandfather’s haiku poems in translation, which I’m really excited about. I recently learned he was a member of the haiku club in the camp where he was incarcerated!
JB: Oh! I have so many interests and ideas! I’ve been working on some picture book manuscripts, about outdoor learning, freedom to read, and social justice. I am in the initial stages of research about another historical wrong that has not been widely written about.
And I have been collaborating with a local Museum and Archives, creating a teaching kit about local community stories, particularly those in the community who faced racism and discrimination.
Q: Anything else we should know?
JB: Thank you, Deborah! @janisbridger_creates janisbridger.ca
LO: Just thank you so much for this opportunity and interview, Deborah! If people are interested, they can find out more about my work at www.laraokihiro.ca or @laraokihiro.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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