Joy Kogawa’s Obasan draws on the theme of breaking silence and finding speech as a powerful device to address the absence of Naomi’s voice. That is to say, Obasan presents the conflict of silence that cannot speak. Naomi, being brought up in a hostile environment, experiences the struggles of the past and being voiceless. Gradually, Naomi finds herself wandering and achieving nothing. Unable to express her feelings,
Naomi stays mostly speechless in her life. To a great degree, she remains traumatized and repressed until she speaks of her own voice.
Later, in tracing the absence of her mother, Naomi finds that her mother’s voice must be revived rather than simply recorded in a letter.
Apparently, the novel has moved from muteness to a spoken