Friday 56 & #BookBeginnings: Obasan

For Book Beginnings:
9:05p.m. August 9, 1972.
The coulee is so still right now that if a match were to be lit, the flame would not waver.

- p. 12

For Friday 56:

The time comes when Momotaro must go and silence falls like feathers of snow all over the rice-paper hut. Inside the hands are slow. Grandmother kneels at the table forming round rice balls, pressing the sticky rice together with her moist fingertips. She wraps them in a small square cloth and, holding them before her in her cupped hands, she offers him the lunch for his journey. There are no tears and no touch. Grandfather and Grandmother are careful, as he goes, not to weight his pack with their sorrow. - p. 56

Synopsis: A powerful and passionate novel, Obasan tells, through the eyes of a child, the moving story of Japanese Canadians during the Second World War. Naomi is a sheltered and beloved five-year-old when Pearl Harbor changes her life. Separated from her mother, she watches bewildered as she and her family become enemy aliens, persecuted and despised in their own land. Surrounded by hardship and pain, Naomi is protected by the resolute endurance of her aunt Obasan and the silence of those around her. Only after Naomi grows up does she return to question the haunting silence.

Obasan means "aunt" in Japanese. I've only just started this and am already enjoying the writing, the sense of family, and the period of Canadian history that it focuses on.