Unit 5 PDF

Multiculturalism Multiculturalism reflected in the works of contemporary Canadian writers. Canadian society as a ‘multicultural mosaic.’ Articulating the concept of ethnicity and the imaginative quest for personal and communal identity in multifarious ways. Issues...

Multiculturalism Multiculturalism reflected in the works of contemporary Canadian writers. Canadian society as a ‘multicultural mosaic.’ Articulating the concept of ethnicity and the imaginative quest for personal and communal identity in multifarious ways. Issues of history, language, race, gender, class, hybridity, assimilation, resistance, and cultural exchange. Ethnic diversity as a source of Canadian fiction. Exploration of cross-cultural realities. Realistic accounts of the immigration experience. Adaptation to a new environment: identification with and alienation from the old and new homelands. Joy Kogawa (b. 1935) Second generation Japanese Canadian (Nisei). Poetry, children’s books, novels, and a memoir. Deeply affected by the unjust treatment of Japanese Canadians [see notes], Kogawa has used literature as an instrument of social action. Political activist, worked to bring about legal reparations for those Japanese Canadian who were adversely affected by government policies during the WWII. Literary approach She works in a way that might be compared to that of the Japanese craftsman (Naomi’s grandfather) mentioned in ‘Obasan’, who uses a plane requiring a pulling motion rather than a pushing one (‘a fundamental difference in workmanship’) — avoiding didacticism by striving to elicit the reader’s feelings rather than imposing conclusions. Significance lies not so much in their collection of facts, figures, and personal memories as in the implications conveyed. Obasan (1981) About the forced evacuation and dispersal of Japanese Canadians during World War II. Achieved ideological ascendancy through her art because her first novel provided a ‘catalyst’ or a ‘powerful literary lever’ for the Japanese Canadians who, throughout the 1970s and 1980s, were attempting to obtain an official apology and some redress for the victims. Obasan is generally classified under the heading of ‘historical fiction’ or, in Linda Hutcheon’s terms, ‘historiographic metafiction,’ which the critic defines as ‘fiction that is intensely, self-reflexively art, but is also grounded in historical, social and political realities’ (1988: 13). Addressing the issues of racism and the rights of citizenship in Canada while she reinterprets and corrects wartime versions of a shameful chapter of North American history. She tries to set the record straight by revealing what really happened. Multiple points of view and juxtaposition of voices (polyphony). Dexterous mixing of genres.  Lyric intensity, elegiac tone, allegoric language and carefully crafted weaving of symbols. The narrator: calm attitude, lack of bitterness and self-pity. The family’s silence about the forced evacuation of the Japanese compels Naomi to gather information for herself from documents that have been responsible for changing her life. The novel itself becomes another document, one that exposes the inadequacies of ‘historical truth’ by challenging the accounts of ‘the Japanese threat’ with a different version—Naomi’s—of the internment. Naomi learns that her family’s story is constructed not only from events and versions of reality but also from the silence that surrounds the experience. ‘Obasan’ —short story, which later became chapter three of the novel with the same title. In the story ‘Obasan’ we see the compassion that Naomi gains from her search: behind easy judgments and the discovery that society’s injustice is the sum of lesser evils, she finds the love and understanding that made it possible for the family’s honour and values to survive during the war. → This discovery is echoed by Kogawa in ‘What do I Remember of the Evacuation’: ‘I remember how careful my parents were/ Not to bruise us with bitterness’. Plot summary At the beginning of the story, the death of Naomi’s Uncle has brought her back to the house where she lived as a child when she was evacuated from Vancouver, and where she intends to comfort the widow, Obasan. In this setting, Naomi tries to confront her past through reminiscence, by pondering the painful memories of her exile. She reflects on how her family suffered the effects of the unjust treatment to which Japanese Canadians were submitted during and after World War II. Narrative techniques and characters Narrator: Naomi Nakana. Writer’s understated prose: full of allusions, emotional echoes, ironic juxtapositions, symbols, similes and metaphors. The old woman Naomi describes is Obasan, one of her two aunts. → Note that the character of Obasan (the Japanese word for aunt) stands for silence, constancy, calmness, patience, acceptance of fate, self-effacement, verbal inarticulateness, and communication through body language and symbolic actions. In an interview, Kogawa remarked that she chose the name of Obasan as the title of her novel because this aunt ‘is totally silent,’ and added ‘if we never see Obasan, she will always be oppressed’ (Wayne 1981: 23). In another interview the author noted that her ‘mother was the model for Obasan’ (Darias 1998: 163). Michael Ondaatje (b. 1943) A postmodernist and postcolonial artist: writer, photographer and film-maker. Personal experience of migration from Sri Lanka: ‘double perspective’ and promoted his interest in exploring a cultural hybridity which reject national borders. Currently praised for the imaginative force of his works. Themes and philosophy Exploration of issues of identity and nationalism, → linked to the experiences of displacement and exile. Questions the notion of fixed identities for nations. Tension between marginality and integration is recurrent in his works. Challenges official history and reconstructs the past as a ‘redefinable’ present. Narratives often based on historical events and real personages. Running in the Family (1982): → postmodern autobiographical text, → hybrid book, at once memoir, fiction and photograph album → the author appears as a compiler. Style and technique Incorporates various sources, mixing different discourses, genres and media. Attracted from an early point in his career to the ‘documentary’ mode. Narrative collages: lyric poetry, interviews, popular songs, archival records, and photographs. Exotic imagery and sensuality. Poetry Early poetry: The Dainty Monsters (1967) and The Man with Seven Toes (1969). → Formalized diction. The poem as an artifact. Overt intertextual references. → Representational powers of language. → Aestheticism and interest in the bizarre. → Wish to compel his readers to redefine their own sense of reality. Variety of forms, he ‘defies categorization as a poet’ (Margaret Atwood) Prose and novels The English Patient (1992): bestseller; sensuous prose and poetic power. Latest novels: The Cat’s Table (2011) and Warlight (2018). Rohinton Mistry (b. 1952) Parsi Zoroastrian; South-Asian immigrant in Canada. Works Such a Long Journey (1991) → Middle-class Parsi community in Bombay, 1970s. → The assertion of Parsi identity. → Realism. Indian English with Hindi words. → Myths from Persian, Hindu, Greek and Christian sources. A Fine Balance (1995) → India during the state of Emergency, mid-1970s. → Drawing upon the traditional art of Indian narrative fiction. Family Matters (2002). → Linking the private and public worlds. → Gentle sense of humour, eye for detail, mastery of form, irony, and insight. Tales from Firozsha Baag → Parsi community and the possibility of departure. → A group of individuals living in one apartment complex in Bombay, some of whom consider emigrating, some of whom actually travel to Toronto. → Mistry documents the divided consciousness experienced by those who depart. Literary style and features Vivid, relatable characters and settings that resonate and stay alive in the reader's mind. Clarity, accuracy, subtlety and keen insight. Humane social realism → Creator of intricately realized worlds that recall those of the great 19th c. novelists. Gentle sense of humour, eye for detail, mastery of form, irony. Indian English with the inclusion of Hindi words. Contemporary Native Canadian Literature Includes a substantial body of works (poetry, fiction, memoirs, and drama) produced by Natives from different tribes with a variety of languages. Use of English to address a pan-Native and a non-Native audience with a wide range of genres, themes, plots, characters, and settings. Works generally set in the present, focused on social realities and political dimensions. The idea of community. Oral patterns of narration. Thomas King (b. 1943) American-born mixed-blood academic and fiction writer. Important voice on Aboriginal studies. Themes and philosophy Intensely political art focused on the experiences of contemporary Native Canadians. Correction of misconceptions about Native peoples. Bicultural play, blending Indigenous and Western perspectives. Humour as a subversive tool: → Against power structure and fighting dominant authority. → Challenge stereotypes. → Consciousness-raising: serios concerns within a comic framework. Reality and myth. Synthesis of → realistic — emphasis on everyday live and earthly events → mythical — grotesque and surrealistic imagery, leading to fantasy and supernatural elements. Aims to not duplicate it, but challenge and correct reality. Oral tradition and storytelling: → Draws from oral literature: novels ‘as musical pieces, symphonies.’ → The trickster: Coyote, a comic, clownish figure. Parodies of master- narratives. Main characters: Blackfoot or Cree Indians from Alberta. Major works Collection of short stories: → One Good Story, That One (1993) → A Short History of Indians in Canada (2005) Novels: → Medicine River (1991) → Green Grass, Running Water (1994) → Truth and Bright Water (1999) → The Back of the Turtle (2014) → Indians on Vacation (2020) Other publications: essays, lectures, poems, children’s stories, and mystery stories. ‘A Coyote Columbus Story’ — One Good Story, That One (1993) The tale of Columbus’s triumphant journey to the Americas is retold from an alternative perspective that deflates all glory. Thomas King’s counter-narrative mocks dominant imperialist discourse and is directed at subverting the authority of the Eurocentric narrative of heroic conquest that was so enthusiastically celebrated on the Christopher Columbus Quincentenary (1992). According to this version of the story, Old Coyote created Columbus and his crew, and that was her big mistake. She was not interested in power, seeking obedience, or imposing any world views. She created different kinds of beings, hoping that they would become her companions to play ball, and when they successively rejected her invitation, she did not punish them or try to force upon them any rules of behaviour. All these creatures lived happily until she created Columbus and his crew, who imposed their norms and became exploitative towards the Indians, but then the harm had been done, and it was too late for Old Coyote to rectify. Role and significance of Coyote The Plains Natives’ mythic trickster figure, → Coyote is a comic, clownish figure who constantly shifts the rules of the tale, thereby challenging reader expectations. → King explains that Coyote has been important to Native writers because it ‘allow us to create a particular kind of world in which the Judeo-Christian concern with good and evil and order and disorder is replaced with the more Native concern for balance and harmony’. → Coyote can change gender; their traits, beliefs, and actions; become other characters and seem to lack the usual sense of character motivation that has been central to the traditional short story. In many ways, King himself is Coyote, always at play, always having fun. Oral tradition and experimental storytelling Capturing the authentic flavour of Native oral storytelling: → Using oral patterns of narration to break free of the established conventions of the story. → Focusing on repetitions, typographical layout, and punctuation. → King’s experimental text are all designed to evoke distinctive speech rhythms. → Treats the story as fluid and shifting, echoing the oral tradition’s adaptability. Instability of time and space Coyote’s shiftiness extends even to King’s own use of oral materials: → Instead of being treated as singular and contained within a mythic narrative located in its own time and space, King treats his Coyote as multiple, as existing both in and out of time, having not only been here before Europeans came to the Americas but as remaining with us still, a timeless figure who predates and outlasts European colonization.