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Canadian Multiculturalism: Past & Present Dionne Brand

What We All Long For. Canadian Multiculturalism: Past & Present Dionne Brand. Postmodern City Texts 2010 Fall. Outline. Introduction Canadian Multiculturalism in Brief Dionne Brand What We All Long For. Evolution of Multiculturalism in Canada. Source :

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Canadian Multiculturalism: Past & Present Dionne Brand

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  1. What We All Long For Canadian Multiculturalism: Past & Present Dionne Brand Postmodern City Texts 2010 Fall

  2. Outline • Introduction • Canadian Multiculturalism in Brief • Dionne Brand • What We All Long For

  3. Evolution of Multiculturalism in Canada • Source: • Fleras, Augie and Jean L. Kunz. 2001. Media and Minorities: Representing Diversity in a Multicultural Canada. Thompson Education Publishing.

  4. Multiculturalism: Questions • Cultural Distinctness, Assimilation or Social Integration • Immigration Policy: How many is too many? • Identity: Babel or Pluralism (Unity in Disunity) • Two Examples • Meeting Place (1990) • Let's All Hate Toronto (2007) (41:00; 52:00; 57:00)

  5. Dionne Brand • A novelist, poet and essayist. • A Marxist, Lesbian and Non-Elite • Not here, nor there: • 布蘭德自稱「逃離」家鄉的，因為當時在千里達她身為一個女孩很受限制 (所以她也是逃離femininity﹔ Silvera 361-63)。但對她而言，她既不住在「那裡」(千里達)，也不住在這裡(加拿大)，而是在兩者之中(Birbalsingh 1996: 122)。

  6. Dionne Brand

  7. Biographical Sketch --fyi • 1953 Born in Trinidad • 1970 immigrated to Canada at the age of 17 • 1970s-80s community worker in Toronto • 1983 Information Officer for the Caribbean People’s Development Agencies and the Agency for Rural Transformation in Grenada • 1997 won the Governor General’s Award for Poetry and the Trillium Award for Land to Light On • A communist who believes in equal distribution of wealth and ending exploitation • Founded and edited Our Lives, Canada’s first black women’s newspaper

  8. Brand—a thinker, writer and filmmaker • BA in English and Philosophy and an MA in the Philosophy of Education –in University of Toronto. • Writer and Filmmaker -- A few examples: • “Blossom” Sans Souci and other Stories (1988) • 9 collections of poems, including • No Language is Neutral (1990), thirsty • 4 documentary films, including • Sisters in Struggle (1991), Long Time Comin' (1993), Listening for Something (1996)—(Adrienne Rich) • Novels • In Another Place, Not Here (1997)--novel • Land To Light On (1997) • At the Full and Change of the Moon—novel • What We All Long For (2006) Toronto Book Award

  9. Toronto's new Poet Laureate Her Reading: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07LVxo31hI8 : Dionne Brand, 2009

  10. Winter Epigrams (1984) I give you these epigrams, Toronto, these winter fragments these stark white papers because you mothered me because you held me with a distance that I expected, here, my mittens, here, my frozen body, because you gave me nothing more and i took nothing less, i give you winter epigrams because you are a liar, there is no other season here

  11. What We All Long For: Characters heterosexual homosexual

  12. What We All Long For: Discussion Questions Description of the city: how it is similar to or different from Taipei? Omniscient narrator and Quy: how are they related to the reader “you”? 2nd-Generation characters & their parents: how do they each relate to their parents? 2nd-Generation characters & their desires: what do they long for? Quy: will he belong? (Guess!)

  13. What We All Long For: Plot Chapter ONE • The city in a transition from winter to spring. • on subway train: 3 characters Tuyen, Oku and Carla 2-3 • on subway train: Quy, heard Tuyen’s laughter, can’t understand English; 1st week in this city • anonymity is the big lie of a city (3); • The people, aware of their ground shifting; permutations of existence at any crossroad; their lives doubled, tripled, conjugated; people in sensational lies • They think they’re safe, but they know they’re not.

  14. What We All Long For: Plot Quy about their leaving Vietnam; One parent let go of his hand. “I won’t say who.” (7) on the boat (7): mistreated and at the camp: a mixture of goodness and brutality Re. journalist; metal toy and a boy “the last sign of [his] innocence” (10)

  15. What We All Long For: Plot Chapter TWO Tuyen back home (Carla to her own room, Oku left them three stops before theirs) Binh coming over. Tuyen –re. Binh [going to Bangkok 12], her parents and their past (13-14) lubaio (14-17) about Carla 17-18 –inhabited in a world of fantasy, of distance, of dreams. about the four in high school, and their parents 19-20 about Tuyen’s parents, their restaurant 21 The mother’s letters 24 Tuyen—about Jamal – “because he’s mine”

  16. What We All Long For: Plot Chapter THREE Carla: riding from the prison (Mimico Correctional Institute) to Etobicoke – High Park – the “muscle of highway and streets” (31) – flies when she rides the bike, embraced by the prison when she stops. (32) Her sense of the city vs. Jamal’s Jamal – his phone calls & his stories (33-34) (past: tried to get Derek to help without success) gazes at the street; Monday- -walks against the current.

  17. What We All Long For: Plot Chapter FOUR • Tuyen, Oku and Jackie • being black • Oku • their parents’ expectation of their living “regular Canadian life” (47) • debating about Jamal again (48) • Tuyen -- Carla – Tuyen (their sexual intimacy and a space of leave-taking) 50-51 –their talk about C’s having no desire (a week before the lawyer called) 52

  18. What We All Long For: Plot Chapter FIVE City overview— Tuyen’s family in Richmond Hill – antiseptic and rootless and desolate (55) – exchanges between father and daughter (“my shit hole”)  Tuyen goes home her father, older sister and mother  Binh and Tuyen –serve as translators for their parents (67), surrogate city.  Tuyen – has wanted to “not be them”

  19. What We All Long For: Plot • 25 Chapters + 7 Quy Chapters After chapter 5: • Jackie’s parents (dance hall)  poverty and crimes  goes for a white man • Carla’s going to Nadine and Derrick for help  her life with Angie (who left little Italian) • Oku dropping out of school – rejecting “guys in the jungle” • Quy finding his way to Toronto Major events and places: • 2001 demonstration against globalization in Quebec City; World Cup • Kensington market

  20. Descriptions of the city: Can you relate to it? Salwar Kameez • Toronto: the weather changes • Torontonians: pp. 3-5 (next) • Carla’s experience: pp. 28-30 bike riding (the city has muscles and selves); watching 39 (the streets) • City (commercial center) on Mondays pp. 41, 53-55 • A shalwa kamese and a Muslim cap

  21. City – Can you relate to it? Anonymity is the big lie of a city. You aren’t anonymous at all. You’re common, really, common like so many pebbles, so many specks of dirt, so many atoms of materiality. What floats in the air on a subway train like this is chance. People stand or sit with the thin magnetic film of their life wrapped around them. They think they’re safe, but they know they’re not. Any minute you can crash into someone else’s life, and if you’re lucky, it’s good, it’s like walking on light.”

  22. 2nd Generation Characters Their high school life pp. 18-19 • shared everything except family details; • Felt as if they inhabited two countries 20 • think their own families boring 19 What do they long for? • Tuyen: Carla; Oku: Jackie • Carla: “home”; Jackie: away from poverty down “the paths of flowers and trees” • All: connectedness and acceptance

  23. Tuyen and her Parents • Hates her Vietnamese background: About the Viet. Restaurant p. 21 • Parents • (65) father: From civil engineer to restaurant owner • Mother: manicurist • Her family • in Richmond Hill 55; 62 • Against Quy 60 • Cam – laminates proofs

  24. Tuyen’s Love & Art works • Loves Carla -- 17 reminds her of a painting by Remedios Varo. • 50 – 52 waiting for her to come around • She wanted sensuality, not duty. (61) • Her Art • Expresses her love for Carla • Expresses her sense of identity • Traveller 64 • Her lubaio (14-17)  “Messages to the city” (17)

  25. PERSONAJE ASTRAL http://davidjure.wordpress.com/category/figuration-feminine-women-painting-women/ By REMEDIOS VARO

  26. Carla Her action in and observation of the city Her relations with Jamal, and with Nadine and Derrick.

  27. Quy • What do you think about him? • talk to you 8-9 • --One rule—eat; you “Don’t be sentimental. Don’t ascribe good intentions.” (9) • -- ran up to be photographed each time (9) • -- metal toy and a boy “the last sign of [his] innocence” (10)

  28. Conclusion Multiple longings, some silenced Multiple lives, mutually enriching or endangering

  29. Tuyen’s Work// the Novel The last cylinder would be empty, the room silent. What for? She still wasn’t quite certain what she was making; she knew she would find out only once the installation was done. Then, some grain, some element she had been circling, but had been unable to pin down, would emerge. (What We All Long For 308)

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