This essay will focus on racial borders within Canadian literature looking at the effects of a border on a member of a minority group. “The border is in fact also the symbol of the exclusionary practice inherent in the discourse of the nation.” Canada is a country made up largely of immigrants and their descendants, an interesting question is, what caused a country, with a diverse population to be so deeply racist?. Two novels which will reflect the experience of a members of immigrant groups in Canada, are The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz by Mordecai Richler and Obasan by Joy Kogawa. The first novel shows the Jewish experience in Canada, The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, is a novel written by a Canadian author. The novels protagonist is a Jewish boy living in Canada. The book while comical illustrates the racial prejudices that existed towards the Jewish Canadians, through Duddy’s story. Duddy is a Jewish boy from a small town in Canada yet he has big dreams, he hopes to one day own some land because his Grandfather tells him “a man without land is a nobody. Remember that Duddel.” this can be read as a comment on Jewish displacement, the fact that the Jewish people came to Canada as immigrants. Duddy’s grandfather, Simcha, came to Canada as an Immigrant. Duddy spends a lot of time focused on his one goal which is town his own land. Throughout the novel Duddy faces discrimination due to coming from a poor area and being Jewish. Finally, a second text to show racial borders within Canadian literature is the novel Obasan. Obasan focus on the struggles of the Japanese Canadian’s. During World War II and due to the bombing of Pearl Harbour, the Japanese immigrants in Canada were subject to extreme racial prejudice. Th...
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... a border be it physical or psychological. Examining both novels as well as doing secondary research into the Canadian border, will also help in understanding Canadian identity. A deep analysis of the two novels will also overcome the constellations of the symbolic imagery that is narration which will dramatize semantics of belonging, loss, and absence that is within the definite of the historically bound and personal context of Canadian experience.
Works Cited
Eleanor Rao, 2004, Exile From Exile: Ironic Paradoxes in Joy Kogawa's Obasan, vol. 18, 2004. Issue title: Within Hostile Borders. Ann Arbor, MI: MPublishing, University of Michigan Library 2004. URL: http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.ark5583.0018.005
Kogawa, J. (1984). Obasan. Harmondsworth:Penguin Books.
Richler, M. (2005). The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravaitz. Toronto: Penguin Classics.
Canada. What does the word invoke in a reader’s mind? The land of multiculturalism perhaps, where people of every different colour, creed, religion and ethnicity can exist in harmony. Or, is it the land of opportunities, where immigrants arrive in the country and find out they will face more obstacles in their quest for a better life. The Canada in Raheel Raza’s A Global Village in Canada is very different to Goran Simic’s Canada in Goodbye Muse, Hello Prada, Raza’s piece will leave readers feeling positive and optimistic about Canada, where everyone can exist peacefully, barring a few who are eager to highlight the differences. The tone of Simic’s piece is far more low-key than Raza’s, not quite as bright and high-strung. Out of the two, Simic’s Canada will resonate with readers more because he used his personal experiences, employed clever language and literary devices to make his writing more memorable, and he described the struggles every immigrant will face as they try to establish themselves in a new country.
Obasan, written by Joy Kogawa, is a narrative account of a Japanese-Canadian family’s during World War II. The young protagonist, Naomi Nakane, witnesses her family break apart as it undergoes relocation that occurred in U.S. and Canada at the time. Although the theme of Obasan is primarily one of heroism, Kogawa’s employs subtle techniques to allude to the Works of Mercy and to affirm its universal values. The former was achieved by the literary elements and the latter by the novel’s form.
In Borderlands, the realities of what happens by the border instill the true terror that people face every day. They are unable to escape and trapped in a tragic situation. After reading my three classmates’ papers, I was able to learn a lot more about this piece than I originally encountered just on my own. I was able to read this piece in a completely new light and expand on ideas that I did not even think of.
This article study will define the important aspects of space and racial identity that are defined through Canadian Constitutional law in “When Place Becomes Race” by Sherene H. Razack. Razack (2002) the historical premise of a “white settler society” as the foundation for spatial hierarchies in the Canadian society, which reflect a racial divide in the community. The white settler society was based on the Anti-Terrorism Act, within Canadian law, which reflects the post-9/11 culture of the Canadian government that has become racialized in the early portion of the 21st century. Razack utilizes the important method of “unmapping” to reconstruct the racial histories that
Literary text sheds light on different erasures through which a dominant Canadian national narrative of benevolence and tolerance emerges. In What We All Long For by Dionne Brand., this tolerance becomes more specific as readers are able to see a struggle in race, generational difference and identity. However, these concepts lead to the creation space negotiation in order to establish Toronto as a home. Through this negotiation there are two kinds of erasures that emerge: fictional and historical. The fictional erasures work to create an unconscious space for the characters. This means that the characters navigate spaces in an intangible manner where they face issues that are not directly impacting to them. It is brought on or is created by the issues they ‘actually’ face. The ‘actual’ issues that these characters face are then transposed into a greater erasure that presents itself as a historical erasure. The fictional erasure becomes a mirror of the historical erasure as it sheds light on how the text manoeuvre through space and time in the text. Though Brand addresses the issues of tolerance while enabling a dominant national Canadian narrative, the novel reveals the generational differences as the vehicle to the negotiation of space. The negotiation of space draws attention to the fictional and historical erasures that show white hegemony as Brand illuminate the issues of immigration, blackness and generational gaps.
Since its publication in 1981, Joy Kogawa's Obasan has assumed an important place in Canadian literature and in the broadly-defined, Asian-American literary canon. Reviewers immediately heralded the novel for its poetic force and its moving portrayal of an often-ignored aspect of Canadian and American history. Since then, critics have expanded upon this initial commentary to examine more closely the themes and images in Kogawa's work. Critical attention has focused on the difficulties and ambiguities of what is, in more ways than one, a challenging novel. The complexity of Obasan's plot, the intensity of its imagery, and the quiet bitterness of its protest challenge readers to wrestle with language and meaning in much the same way that Naomi must struggle to understand her past and that of the larger Japanese-Canadian community. In this sense, the attention that Obasan has received from readers and critics parallels the challenges of the text: Kogawa's novel, one might say, demands to be reckoned with, intellectually as well as emotionally.
Fleras, Augie. “Aboriginal Peoples in Canada: Repairing the Relationship.” Chapter 7 of Unequal Relations: An Introduction to Race, Ethnic and Aboriginal Dynamics in Canada. 6th ed. Toronto: Pearson, 2010. 162-210. Print.
More immigration lead to racism and fear among both English Canadians who believed immigrants were taking away their jobs and French Canadians who feared that immigrants may potentially dominate their culture. These misconceptions and fears lead the Canadian government to declare new regulations that restricted the immigration of Asian and eastern, and southern European descents as well as Jewish immigrants. Canada gave more preference to descendants of both Britain and Western Europe. Policies were then developed to grant access to the best immigrants (as it was called) who were mainly whites that possessed a wealth of skills and benefits but to exclude the non whites who we...
"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a
Scholars largely debate cultural diversity as a cause of decentralization. “The provincial governments are strong in Canada because Canadians have distinctive needs and interests that cannot be accommodated within a single national government, and also because of Canadians actually want strong provincial governments and a relatively weak federal one” (Stevenson, “Federalism and Intergovernmental Relations” 90). This argument was strategically counter argued by sociologist John Porter in The Vertical Mosaic. “Even if it were true, it would not necessarily explain the power exercised by provincial governments” (Stevenson, “Federalism and Intergovernmental Relations, 91).
Joy Kogawa’s novel Obasan is the story of discrimination, identity, and silence in the Japanese - Canadian community during and after World War II. Kogawa places a special emphasis on silence, speech, as well as the positive and negative aspects of both. In the novel, Kogawa contrasts silence and speech by illustrating through Obasan and Aunt Emily, respectively, while also demonstrating Naomi’s confusion of whether she should be silent or vocal about her feelings and views. Obasan’s silence is representative of her traditional Japanese values while Aunt Emily’s outspoken tendencies represent her message of being a Canadian. Speaking out about issues is an ideology most would associate with western society and
Canadians view themselves as morally correct, yet the Indigenous peoples are oppressed and discriminated by Canadians. The Aboriginal peoples culture would last longer without Canada since Canada wants to control first, but not by understanding the culture and heritage. Aboriginal peoples express how they felt about the Canadian “Myth of Progress”. Some other works take a more satirical look like “Tidings of Comfort and Joy” but the points still stand. One of the points is Canadians are discriminating the Indigenous peoples to be lazy and corrupt.
Observing this, I will look at how race is socially produced and the persistence of colonial oppression throughout history. Then, I will look at this resonates with the concept of racialization and belonging. Finally, I will analyse Tuyen’s lubaio as a space where the city of Toronto becomes witness to a site of resistance. In conclusion, I suggest that Tuyen’s lubaio does in fact represent racialization and resistance, yet whether or not I could be effectively interpreted in its intended way through the colonial gaze is ultimately questionable.
What do the works, “As Canadian as Possible under the Circumstances” and “I’m not the Indian you had in mind” have in common? The dissection of these writing pieces revealed that they do in fact have multiple similarities. Those ideas are the use of identity, stereotypes as well as double meanings.
Many will agree that the relocation and evacuation of Japanese Canadian during World War II did not have just cause. But perhaps, with past perspective it may have been a prudent action, as need of many always outweighs the need of few. Nevertheless, What Naomi had to endure was not an easy ordeal. Racial discrimination occurs even today, despite the current paradigm that believes racism should be eradicated. Obasan and Itsuka captures the essence of one¡¯s pain enduring such discrimination, with an innocent child¡¯s perspective and mature adult who had already been victimized. By focusing on protagonist Naomi¡¯s experiences during the relocation, both novels show that with her strong beliefs she was able to overcome the hardship and realize her past has constructed her future. Naomi never lost her faith in her family, friends, and in her country. Thus, strong beliefs and having faith can be a powerful weapon against hopeless odds and immense hardships.