Articles

Abstract: Fiction has the power to create a space where theunspeakable can be represented and explored. One of our greatest taboos, ...

Abstract: “Las luces se apagan solo queda una zona atrâs junto al desfiladero donde tendre que reventar y maquillarme maquillarme y ...

Abstract: IT WAS ONLY AFTER ? PUBLISHED A BOOK that I was forced to consider the question of influence on my ...

Abstract: ?[HE EARLIEST of the Canadian captives to write a narrativein IHE English was Pierre-Esprit Radisson who was captured by the ...

Abstract: FMY EARLIEST YEARS I wanted to be an editor. If an • ROM anxious aunt had asked me, “What are ...

Abstract: SCOTT SYMONS’ Place d’Armes is an experimental novel whose typographical variety, maps and diary format reflect a McLuhanesque aesthetic sense ...

Abstract: This paper addresses physiological responses to psychological trauma. It argues that the narratorâ??s experience in a World War II internment camp disrupts not only her mental processes and her ability to narrate traumatic events but that it interrupts her physical aging process (the body's narrative) as well. Sakamoto's novel demonstrates that internalized racism can reveal itself externally on the body. Traumatized individuals in the novel come to understand themselves as figures of abjection at community and national levels as the polity attempts to expel those whom it sees as harmful to the social body.

Abstract: Rohinton Mistry was born in Bombay in 1952 and migrated to Canada in 1975. As a “writer from elsewhere” (Salman ...

Abstract:

Salish-Métis writer Lee Maracle’s Sundogs (1992) and Guyanese Canadian writer Tessa McWatt’s Out of My Skin (1998) are among a small number of narratives that take place during the standoff at Kahnesatake. In this article I read these two texts through a diasporic lens to demonstrate how they explore intersecting histories of Indigenous and Black diasporic marginalization, trauma, and (de)colonization, emphasizing the importance of cross-cultural alliances in nation building. Both novels are set in urban contexts, highlight the importance of language and voice in the process of (de)colonization, de-centre the white reader, and focus on the emotional and spiritual growth of their young female protagonists. They also ask to be read allegorically in that the dynamics of personal relationships signify the larger forces of nation building as in both texts the armed standoff initiates the protagonists’ political awakening and changes their notion of Canada. I bring the two texts in conversation with each other to demonstrate how indigeneity and diaspora intersect, and how the tensions between the two concepts have the potential to transform notions of national identity, sovereignty, citizenship and belonging. My discussion of Sundogs as a diasporic text is indebted to Jean-Paul Restoule’s observation that many Aboriginal people in urban areas have resisted assimilation “in the process creating diasporic identities” (21). In Out of My Skin, the white settler-native dichotomy, on which the discussion of decolonization in Canada and in other settler societies is usually based, is portrayed as being unhinged by the racialized diasporic subject. Both texts subvert the status quo. In Sundogs white society loses its centrality while Aboriginal identity affirms itself by reclaiming Vancouver. Out of My Skin disrupts the notion of the “two solitudes” by acknowledging the role of Aboriginal peoples as well as that of racialized diasporic communities in nation building.

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Abstract: AS: Readers will be interested in the fact that you began your career as an actor. When was that? TF: ...