ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how authors contend with the turbulent terrain of fraught grief of the late 20th and early 21st centuries by looking at two key novels, Obasan (1981) by Joy Kogawa and Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (2005) by Jonathan Safran Foer. In writing loss, these authors explore mourning as a type of work or labour that unfolds as a process of mourning, and their resulting novels become products of that mourning, what one can deem an artifact of their work. These novels operate as memorial structures for their readers, enacting an ethical relationship so that readers engage with significant traumatic experiences of loss of the period, and learn about the nature of loss and about how to find in cultural expression useful models of coping. Readers are given insight into how a private work of mourning unfolds and how that private act relates to public commemoration.
