Analysis Of Dionne Brand's 'What We All Long For'

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‘Diversity, Our Strength’ is the motto which Toronto has become recognized and celebrated for. This distinguishing slogan has come a long way from the once White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) dominated ‘Toronto, the Good’. In the past 30 years, Toronto has transformed from an “elusively white enclave” to the immigrant city it is today. In Dionne Brand’s novel What We All Long For, Toronto is depicted as an "anglicized" city, possessing a multiracial and multicultural population. In this paper, I will analyze the existing generational gap caused by the time-space discrepancy between the two different immigrant generations. Due to their foreign appearance and language barriers, first-generation immigrants are often prejudiced against. Components from their former lives such as social standing and achievements are neglected and stereotypes are often cast upon specific ethnicities. For instance, upon arrival to Canada, Tuyan’s parents were not allowed to work in their original professions (a doctor and an engineer respectively). Instead, Her mother “Cam became a manicurist in a beauty salon near Chinatown while Tuan [her father] unloaded fruit and other…show more content…
This has resulted in a time-space discrepancy between the two generations. The process of detachment from their former lives has proven to be a difficult task. Oku, for example, saw his parents “as people who somehow lived in the near past and were unable or unwilling to step into the present”. The same nostalgia makes Tuyen’s parents suffer. His father is tired of drawing buildings like a civil engineer, while her mother is sick of pacing, her insomnia, and writing letters to find her son. The constant repetition of these tasks underlines their complete loss of hope. They are torn between two worlds and identities. Instead of letting go, they continue to live in past due to the tragic reminder of the loss of their son

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