Madama Butterfly Study Guide - Pacific Opera Victoria

For Grades 4-6
Read Naomi’s Road by Joy Kogawa
Naomi’s Road, Joy Kogawa’s memoir for children about a family’s experience in the WWII
Japanese internment camps of central BC, can help introduce the concepts of prejudice and
social justice to upper elementary children, and in turn be related to the themes of Madama
Butterfly.
Fiction (Juvenile)
Naomi's Road
Drawings by Matt Gould.
Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1986.
New, expanded ed.
Drawings by Ruth Ohi.
Markham, ON: Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 2005.
Publisher's Synopsis (from Fitzhenry &
Whiteside website)
... Naomi’s Road is the story of a girl whose Japanese-
Canadian family is uprooted during the Second World
War. Separated from their parents, Naomi and her brother
Stephen are sent to an internment camp in the interior of
British Columbia. For the young girl growing up, war only
means that she can no longer return to her home in
Vancouver, or see her parents. Told from a child’s point of
view and without a trace of anger or malice, Naomi’s Road
has been praised as a powerful indictment of the injustice
of war and the government’s treatment of Japanese-
Canadian citizens, both during and well after World War
II.
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Pacific Opera Victoria Study Guide for Madama Butterfly 2008 18