Critics and reviewers have found a lot to say about Kogawa' s first novel because of its wondrous poetic prose and its successful attempt to express the Canadian hybrid as art. The most popular theme to pick up on in the critical literature is family and how Kogawa writes the family drama as non-Oedipal but a struggle of the mother-culture to survive in patriarchy. It is this struggle which either leaves the daughter devastated or barely intact. The other obvious focus for critics has been the cultural blending of the Japanese and the Canadian that Kogawa subtly accomplishes. Other interpretations have focused on the landscape as a force in the novel which eventually overcomes the government's action.

Following the publication of the novel and the awards, the first reviews were bland. They were almost bothered by the silences of the novel. An early review in the...