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La comunidad japonesa-americana se ha visto marcada por la experiencia del internamiento en campos de concentración a consecuencia de la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Este hecho histórico demostró que a pesar del carácter multicultural de las sociedades estadounidense y canadiense lo que prevalecía era la noción de la supremacía blanca. Joy Kogawa y Mitsuye Yamada fueron de las primeras voces que rompieron con el silencio de canadienses y estadounidenses de origen japonés. Ambas exploran cómo las políticas racistas de sus respectivos países han afectado no sólo sus vidas, sino también las de sus antepasados y la de las generaciones más jóvenes. Abstract: The Japanese American community has been deeply marked by the internment experience as a result of the Second World War. This historical event demonstrated the fact that, despite the multicultural nature of U.S. and Canadian societies, notions of white supremacy were the ones that prevailed. Joy Kogawa and Mitsuye Yamada were two of the first voices that emerged breaking the silence of Canadian and American citizens of Japanese origin. They explore the ways in which the racist policies of their respective countries had affected not only their own lives, but also that of their ancestors and of the younger generations.

This article situates the reception of Joy Kogawa's "Obasan" within a comparative North American context, tracing the divergence and convergence of US and Canadian racial discourses in the canonization of "Obasan" in Asian American and Canadian literary studies. Through a consideration of how the novel both affirms the oppositional politics of Asian American literary studies and the fragmented nationalism of Canadian literary studies, this article argues that the politics of reception, appropriation and recognition that underwrite the text's cross-border canonization are prefigured by the text's own engagement with passing and recognition. While "Obasan's" blurring of Japanese Canadian and First Nations experiences can be read as a critique of Canadian racialization and the presumed universalization of US racial formations, such representational strategies are not immune to the colonizing gestures that inform the text's inclusion in Asian American and Canadian literary studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]