Historic Joy Kogawa House Book Shop

Obasan item
Obasan
$20

Obasan (1981) – This award-winning poetic novel chronicles Canada’s internment and persecution of its citizens of Japanese descent during the Second World War from the perspective of a young child. The first novel to share this personal experience with Canadians, published by an Asian Canadian woman with a literary trade publisher. On curriculum lists around the world; translated into Japanese, French, and German.

The Bewilderments of Bernard Willis item
The Bewilderments of Bernard Willis
$20
Mixed Martial Arts item
Mixed Martial Arts
$15
百姓 A Hundred Surnames item
百姓 A Hundred Surnames
$15
Nascar item
Nascar
$15
Carts, Hedges, Lions. item
Carts, Hedges, Lions.
$40

By: Taizo Yamamoto, with contributions by Aaron Peck, Kevin Chong, and Jackie Wong.

Warp and Weft Chapbook item
Warp and Weft Chapbook
$15

A beautifully stitched chapbook of poems and paintings by Carla Stein. The cover itself hints at the slender book’s contents. As though writer and reader are sharing a secret.

Not so Pretty Haiku item
Not so Pretty Haiku
$13

Working on this book has been an adventure all the way through. Isabella sent me her initial ideas, and the conversation took off from there. We discussed the theme of the book, how she wanted to have heavy contrast between the sombre tone of her poems and the beauty of the plants and flowers she found while walking the trails and parks near and far from her home. - Isabella Mori

Beyond the Map: A Falkland Tale item
Beyond the Map: A Falkland Tale
$7

This heartwarming short story by author Matthew Heneghan was the chosen submission from Tigerpetal Press’s 2023 August submission period. Though brief, this story stood out among its peers as a spark of connection and lingering kindness.

This Long Road item
This Long Road
$17

Sally Quon’s poetry collection, ‘This Long Road’ was the chosen submission from Tigerpetal Press’s 2023 November submission period. The theme was recovery; healing; and/or personal growth, and Sally’s collection fit perfectly with these and with our vision.

In Sentimentality item
In Sentimentality
$10
Time to Wonder: A Kid's Guide to B.C's Regional Museums 3 item
Time to Wonder: A Kid's Guide to B.C's Regional Museums 3
$22

The third entry in the Time to Wonder Series. These books give you a backstage pass to explore behind the scenes in regional museums throughout BC. Whether you are an experienced museumgoer or just curious about something new, this is a book you will read over and over.

From the Lost and Found Department: New and Selected Poems item
From the Lost and Found Department: New and Selected Poems
$25

From the Lost and Found Department (2023), by the trailblazing Joy Kogawa, is a profound work of spare, trenchant, and haunting poems that lets us stay with the quietest qualities of beauty and the sublime. This essential volume brings together thrilling new work with selected poems from The Splintered Moon (1967), A Choice of Dreams (1974), Jericho Road (1977), Woman In the Woods (1985), and A Garden of Anchors: Selected Poems (2003). Kogawa’s poems here are evidence that our every vulnerability can open into vast channels of grace.

Garden of Anchors item
Garden of Anchors
$10

This volume is a carefully selected poems from previously published books and includes a number of new poems, as well as 're-writes' of some previously published works. It solidifies and define Joy Kogawa as one of the literary giants of Canadian literature.

Naomi's Road item
Naomi's Road
$10

Naomi’s Road (1986) – Children’s novel based on Obasan, tells the internment story more personally from the perspective of six-year-old Naomi. Vancouver Opera in Schools toured a production of Naomi’s Road to schools throughout British Columbia, across Canada, and in Seattle in 2005–2006.

Naomi's Tree item
Naomi's Tree
$10

Naomi’s Tree (2008) – Children’s picture book illustrated by Ruth Ohi. Tells the story of the loyal cherry tree that grows in the backyard of Naomi Nakane’s childhood home. After she and her family are forced to leave, the tree remembers her across the miles and years. A story of friendship and forgiveness.

Gently to Nagasaki item
Gently to Nagasaki
$25

Gently to Nagasaki (2016) – Memoir of Joy Kogawa’s life as a writer and social activist, from redress to environmentalism to nuclear energy. Focus begins wide and then closely examines family transgressions, including those of her father, Rev. Gordon Goichi Nakayama, and struggles to rebuild broken trust.

Emily Kato (Itsuka) item
Emily Kato (Itsuka)
$20

Itsuka (1992) – Novel followup to Obasan, Naomi travels from southern Alberta to join Aunt Emily and her political activism for Redress in Toronto. Republished as Emily Kato (2005), with an additional plotline involving an Armenian priest reconciling the Genocide (1915–1916). Original plotline re-released as Itsuka (2019).

Found item
Found
$22

The language of Small Arguments is simple, yet there is nothing simple in its ideas. Reminiscent of Pablo Neruda’s Elemental Odes, these poems explore the structures of argument, orchestrating material around repetition, variation, and contrast.

What Gives us Our Names by Alvin Pang item
What Gives us Our Names by Alvin Pang
$20

He’d gotten the idea from a book, not unlike the one you last read and loved, whose lurid covers you have already forgotten. For a canvas, he used not his own skin but his very life, spending his days as if he were made up of the most telling bits of other people. To do this, he learned to watch quietly and look deeply , past the busy surfaces until he could discern the colours beneath, the ones that did not change. One by one he would name them as he wove them into his heart in the deep of night. He touched you once, borrowing pieces of your story in passing. They are here still, in case you wish to look.

What Happened by Alvin Pang item
What Happened by Alvin Pang
$20

This volume of selected poems surveys Alvin Pang's oeuvre over the past two decades, and includes significant new, previously unpublished material. Singapore's 2005 Young Artist of the Year for Literature, Alvin Pang is active internationally as a poet, writer, editor, and translator. He has authored over a dozen books, including several anthologies of Singaporean literature. His poetry has been published worldwide in more than 20 languages.

Uniterrupted Time By Alvin Pang item
Uniterrupted Time By Alvin Pang
$10

In this universe we sip milk tea as the child we can never have gambols on the fine sand of our unfinished pining. In a series of textured prose currents, UNINTERRUPTED TIME assays confluent moments of familial and intimate relations, tracing the mortal body’s insistent and at times devastating transitions.

Diaphanos by Alvin Pang item
Diaphanos by Alvin Pang
$20

For over a decade, international poets Alvin Pang (Singapore) and George Szirtes (UK) have met time and again-as friends and fellow wordsmiths on page and stage-until the Covid-19 pandemic struck. Confined to different sides of the globe, they began to write poems back and forth in response to one another. Reflecting on the circumstances in which we find ourselves living, the two poets dance in language through questions of life and time, with the world teetering from Covid through Black Lives Matters and Brexit to the Ukraine conflict.

The Last to the Party item
The Last to the Party
$20

In this highly anticipated and deeply moving debut, Chuqiao Yang explores family, culture, diaspora, and the self's tectonic shifts over time. Yang's poems journey restlessly through recollections of a Saskatchewan.

How to Pronounce Knife item
How to Pronounce Knife
$25

Named one of Time's Must-Read Books of 2020, and featuring stories that have appeared in Harper's, Granta, The Atlantic, and The Paris Review, this revelatory book of fiction from O. Henry Award winner Souvankham Thammavongsa establishes her as an essential new voice in Canadian and world literature. Told with compassion and wry humour, these stories honour characters struggling to find their bearings far from home, even as they do the necessary "grunt work of the world."

Small Arguments item
Small Arguments
$22

The language of Small Arguments is simple, yet there is nothing simple in its ideas. Reminiscent of Pablo Neruda’s Elemental Odes, these poems explore the structures of argument, orchestrating material around repetition, variation, and contrast.

Lettuce Lettuce Please Go Bad item
Lettuce Lettuce Please Go Bad
$20
Kletic Kink item
Kletic Kink
$30
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