小川喜樂的《歐巴桑》是一部刻畫珍珠港事變後太平洋戰爭期間加拿大日裔公民集體遭放逐、隔離拘留經歷的作品。這部作品自一九八一年出版以來，不僅受到英語世界各方的重視，在北美地區的學術界也引起廣泛的討論。不同於既有的觀點，本文探討這部作品裡童年故事與族裔、歷史敘述之間的關係。文中主張，在這部作品裡，敘述者直美的童年敘述不僅以對抗記憶的型式出現，作者小川也援用和改寫現代社會關於孩童的文化、政治預設，探索返/反寫歷史和構築日加族裔記憶的可能。為了彰顯童年的歷史特性，《歐巴桑》一方面強調兒時記憶難以掌握、操控，另一方面又希望藉由敘述童年、刻劃孩童進一步彰顯童年往事與族裔、歷史之間密不可分的關連。討論的部份首先藉由秦凱德、斯迪得曼與帕朗伯-劉的論點關連童年敘述與官方歷史，探討小川如何透過敘述童年道出戰爭前後加拿大日加社群久被壓抑、掩埋的個人傷痛和族裔歷史。接下來，本文將《歐巴桑》裡的孩童塑造與簡克斯、阿希耶、溫尼寇特等關於童年的論點平行比對閱讀，藉此說明小川如何運用現代社會對孩童及童年的預設積極介入主流歷史的敘述、突顯小說中的孩童塑造如何關連庶民知識、構成傅柯所謂的對抗記憶。

Joy Kogawa’s Obasan, now a highly acclaimed literary text of the uprooting of the Japanese Canadians during the Second World War, is interspersed with the narrator’s childhood memories and presented significantly through the point of view of the child narrator. This paper aims at reading Obasan in the cultural and historical matrix of North American ethnic literature by taking Kogawa’s negotiation between fictional childhood and official history as its major issue. It explores how the childhood memories are deeply implicated in the fluctuations of history, and how the idea of the child makes speakable personal trauma of the internment experiences, and activates, in Michel Foucault’s words, forms of “counter-memory” in Kogawa’s wiring. To illuminate the historicity of childhood memories, the paper suggests, Kogawa depicts Naomi’s childhood as a separate space outside of official history, and at the same time, draws upon it as a repository of cultural meanings to demonstrate the interconnection between childhood memories and ethnic histories. The first part of the paper uses theoretical perspectives derived from James Kincaid, Carolyn Steedman, and David Palumbo-Liu to examine the way in which childhood connects ethnic memories and historiography. In the second part, the figure of the child in Obasan is read along with some of the theoretical insights that have been developed by Chris Jenks, Philippe Aries, and D.W. Winnicott. Through an intersexual reading of childhood in the novel, the paper highlights the dynamics of childhood narrative in the literary negotiation with the unspeakable past as exemplified in Joy Kogawa.