General Instructions on class procedures + Analysis of Diamond Grill
11 Março 2020, 14:00 • Cecília Maria Beecher Martins
We will continue to work on the three Canadian-immigrant minority community texts that we had started to look at and even though most of you have copies of these already, I have also sent them to the group email that I set up.
We will work on "Diamond Grill" on (11th). Then "Obasan" on (16th) and "The Summer my Grandmother was Supposed to have died" on (18th). So please read the texts before class.
I will send some preparatory notes and questions to the group email before class and I will be online at class times (2.00-4.00 p.m. Mondays and Weds) to answer your questions and send a final analysis of the text reviewed.
Also, the submission of the abstract for your essay is still 23rd March, but of course you can submit this by email. You can also send questions about your essay to my email (cbeecher@campus.ul.pt) during class time or at any other time. I will either answer them then or later, but please stick to this time to ask your questions so that we can keep some order to the work.
Questions discussed on Diamond Grill
While the " Canadian long poem" is often associated with the "Confederacy Poets" from 1860s to 1900s and the later poetry of Anglo-Saxon origin (in particular Pratt and Birney); this form of long poetry actually had its origins in the declamatory long poems of the First Nation tradition (p 35 your manual).
As we saw in the last class - this declamatory poetry served 4 main functions:
1) the presentation of concerns/grievances
2) the understanding of belonging to a long tradition - where the "I" as a person is rarely referred to, rather the voice of the first person is the collective "We of the tribe"
3) the awareness that this "We" exists as part of a natural environment - is a product and protector of that environment and tradition
4) When grievance is expressed, solutions can be found - these poems normally ended with recognition and hope.
Biotext shares many of these characteristics, born as it was from the long poems of •Michael Ondaajte (Ceylon & Britain), Daphne Marlatt (Australia & Malaysia), Roy Kiyooka (Japan) and Fred Wah (China & Sweden & Sctos/Irish)
It too asks the 4 questions above, even if it does this in a slightly different fashion. For instance (3) above becomes "I" not we and is asked in relationship with a questioning of how this hybrid being, who is the author, fits into his/her many cultural backgrounds and Canada as well.
(5) They also use different formats, moving between prose, poetry and even historic/newspaper entries
(6) The "I" can be variable
Questions for today (please send these to my email cbeecher@campus.ul.pt before or during class time 2.00-4.00 p.m. when I will reply)
1. What did you like/dislike about the Diamond Grill text?
2. Do you see traces of points 1 to 6 in it?
Analysis of extract from Diamond Grill
All of your readings offered interesting insight and I enjoyed the exchange greatly. Thank you all for your contribution.
There are just a few things that I have to say about biotext before we look at the extract.
When Michael Ondaajte, Daphne Marlatt, Roy Kiyooka and Fred Wah started to write in this way, they wrote in such a way that at least one other of the group read their text and discussed it with them because it would be in the encounter of the writer/reader that the meaning would be fully revealed. This kind of writing took place in a specific window of time 1970s- early 2000s as the children of pre-multiculturalism tried to figure out what it meant to be hybrid in Canada – it was the literature of the “-“ Chinese-Canadian, Japanese-Canadian.
As it was a hybrid writing, it flowed between different forms and raised different questions – and these questions were not necessarily answered in the text, but rather in the reading of the text their significance would become apparent.
However, either because most of these writers were also poets there is a poetry/musicality in this prose writing (that is not found in their other literary texts)
Obasan, which strictly speaking is not a biotext, even though it has biotext elements also has sections with this musicality – does identity exploration lead to this form?
Looking at specific sections, we see traces of this
p12-14
p12Four of the features of biotext are here in this opening section:
1. Short segment which while they are independent they are joined intimately to the next one. Because the idea is not finished in the first, it flows into the following one. We don’t have the classical narrative structure of orientation, conflict, resolution – rather (half-formed) ideas are placed Out there for the reader to engage with and help the writer make sense of
2. The title flows into the text, so no title as such, just a beginning of a question
3. Mixed formats – here prose flows into poetry and back into prose
4. The moving “I” from Fred Wah to his father (p12 “I” became him, 1st person narrator but the voice of Fred Wah, however p13&14 “they wouldn’t…” section FW’s mother’s voice”, p39 FW (or someone else as 3rd person narrator”)
Then we have the contemplation of existence within the context of this new world – the bear represents Canada, but also remember that the bear is a symbol of harmony in Chinese tradition – is Wah referring to this/aware of this? We don’t know. This is one of the issues of biotext – we are not always sure of all of the references – one of the central ideas is that the writer’s identity is constructed as the reader reflects on and discusses the work with the writer. The original biotext long poems were written and read by the authors and there was some degree of collaboration as the writers saw their readers could see things in their texts that the writers had not seen themselves.
p13 – discussion of painful rejection because of race; but finally acceptance because of positive behaviour
p15 – we are introduced to the plight of the greater Chinese immigrant community introduced through the character of Shu – that fact that we are intruded to Shu as the Diamond Grill prepares for Christmas is no coincidence.
p22-23 Wah uses a mixed prose/poetry text to explore the difficulties faced by the first Chinese in Canada and connects his own experience to this
p29-31 the Chinese diner part of Canadian life and there to “serve” the locals at all times – hence the anger (p31) – accepted when necessary, but always an outsider and expected to do more difficult and more dangerous work (throw back to construction of the railway).
p38-39 personal reflection on a similar theme
p68-75 grandfather, as already discussed ambiguous relationship here, but he (and the food he eats) is the only truly, genuine connection to this Chinese past, but even this Chinese past is somehow adulterated in Canada – “high muckamuck” his identifying phrase is not Chinese but Canadian.