Betrayed by History: Redressing a Wounded Community in Kerri Sakamoto’s 'The Electrical Field'

Abstract

What does it take to heal the scars of a traumatic experience? And is any kind of restoration even possible when the wound is larger than the single individual, afflicting an entire community? The now well-documented experience of internment that marred the cultural memory of the Japanese Canadian community is one such trauma still bidding for redress. The present paper therefore proposes to revisit this painful wound caused by history at both the personal and the community level, as it is reflected through the fictional lens of award-winning Japanese Canadian author Kerri Sakamoto, in her dark lyrical debut novel The Electrical Field (1998). Following the thread of possible alleviation, we will analyze the effect of war and injustice on the individual mind and heart, and look at how difficult to obtain is love, the only redress available to those betrayed by history.