Canadian Multiculturalism: Past

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What We All Long For

• Canadian Multiculturalism Past Present
• Dionne Brand

Postmodern City Texts 2010 Fall
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Outline

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

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Evolution of Multiculturalism in Canada
  Ethnicity Multiculturalism (1970s) Equity Multiculturalism (1980s) Civic Multiculturalism (1990s) Integrative Multiculturalism (2000s)
Focus Celebrating differences Managing diversity Constructive engagement Inclusive citizenship
Reference Point Culture Structure Society building Rights and responsibilities
Mandate Ethnicity Race relations Citizenship Identity
Problem Source Prejudice Systemic discrimination Exclusion Globalization, security
Solution Cultural sensitivity Employment equity Inclusiveness ???
Key Metaphor Mosaic' Level playing field' Belonging' Two-way street'

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

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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) (4100 5200
  5700)

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Dionne Brand

• A novelist, poet and essayist.
• A Marxist, Lesbian and Non-Elite

• Not here, nor there
• ????????????,???????????????????
  (???????femininity? Silvera 361-63)??????,????????
  ?(???),??????(???),???????(Birbalsingh 1996 122)?

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Dionne Brand

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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
  Peoples Development Agencies and the Agency for
  Rural Transformation in Grenada
• 1997 won the Governor Generals 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, Canadas first
  black womens newspaper

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Branda 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 Moonnovel
• What We All Long For (2006) Toronto Book Award

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Toronto's new Poet Laureate

• Dionne Brand, 2009

Her Reading http//www.youtube.com/watch?v07LVx
o31hI8



photo by jasonchowphotography.com
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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

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What We All Long For Characters

Vietnamese Italian-Black Caribbean from Nova Scotia
artist courier poet fashion store owner
heterosexual
homosexual
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What We All Long For Discussion Questions

1. Description of the city how it is similar to or
   different from Taipei?
2. Omniscient narrator and Quy how are they related
   to the reader you?
3. 2nd-Generation characters their parents how do
   they each relate to their parents?
4. 2nd-Generation characters their desires what
   do they long for?
5. Quy will he belong? (Guess!)

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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 Tuyens laughter,
  cant 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 theyre safe, but they know theyre
  not.

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What We All Long For Plot

• Quy
• about their leaving Vietnam
• One parent let go of his hand. I wont 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)

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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 Tuyens parents, their restaurant 21
• The mothers letters 24
• Tuyenabout Jamal because hes mine

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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. Jamals
• 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.

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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
  Cs having no desire (a week before the lawyer
  called) 52

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What We All Long For Plot

• Chapter FIVE
• City overview
• Tuyens 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

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What We All Long For Plot

• 25 Chapters 7 Quy Chapters
• After chapter 5
• Jackies parents (dance hall) ? poverty and
  crimes ? goes for a white man
• Carlas 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

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Descriptions of the city Can you relate to it?
Salwar Kameez

• Toronto the weather changes
• Torontonians pp. 3-5 (next)
• Carlas 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

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City Can you relate to it?

• Anonymity is the big lie of a city. You arent
  anonymous at all. Youre 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 theyre safe, but they know theyre
  not. Any minute you can crash into someone elses
  life, and if youre lucky, its good, its like
  walking on light.

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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

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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

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Tuyens 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)

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PERSONAJE ASTRAL

• By REMEDIOS VARO

http//davidjure.wordpress.com/category/figuration
-feminine-women-painting-women/
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Carla

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

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Quy

• What do you think about him?
• talk to you 8-9
• --One ruleeat you Dont be sentimental. Dont
  ascribe good intentions. (9)
• -- ran up to be photographed each time (9)
• -- metal toy and a boy the last sign of his
  innocence (10)

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Conclusion

• Multiple longings, some silenced
• Multiple lives, mutually enriching or endangering
  

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Tuyens Work// the Novel

• The last cylinder would be empty, the room
  silent. What for? She still wasnt 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)