Obasan Chapter 8 Summary

  • Then Aunt Emily asks Naomi if she wants to know everything. She says yes. So here we are, five months later, and Naomi has a giant package in her lap.
  • There is some twine wrapping the package, and Obasan saves it for a rainy day. She saves everything. Seriously, everything, Even Popsicle sticks. Even old putrefying food. Gross.
  • Maybe some memories should be forgotten. Like the memory of what was once a delicious loaf of bread and is now a gray, fuzzy science experiment.
  • There's something in the package Naomi can't identify. They are two Japanese-style envelopes with letters inside, written in Japanese characters on fancy rice paper. Naomi asks Obasan about them. No answers, again.
  • Naomi is so curious about Aunt Emily's package that she wants to read it all at once. But she came here for a reason. Obasan just lost her husband yesterday. We think she's just a bit more important than the diary.
  • The next time that Naomi sees Obasan, she has a picture in her hands. It's Naomi and her mom looking happy. Naomi tries to see when it was taken, but there is no date on the back of the picture.