Open AccessAn autonomous place in the global city: an interpretation of Dionne Brand’s “What we all long for”
Author(s) -
Beatriz de Carvalho Monteiro
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
revista geografia, literatura e arte
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2594-9632
DOI - 10.11606/issn.2594-9632.geoliterart.2020.167477
Subject(s) - interpretation (philosophy) , immigration , identity (music) , sociology , gender studies , focus (optics) , point (geometry) , history , aesthetics , art , linguistics , mathematics , philosophy , physics , archaeology , optics , geometry
Dionne Brand creates characters with peculiar aspirations in her novel What we all long for. In Toronto, Quy, Tuyen, Carla, Oku and Jackie have their childhoods and origins shaped by the urban spaces they occupy. The author elaborates the struggles between immigrants in Canada and their children, born in the country, as these young people drift in Toronto. How much are these tensions natural in child-parent relationships? In what ways are they more difficult because of the immigrant experience? In this paper, we focus on Oku to point out that the strain in child-parent relationships resembles the tensions between the diasporic subjects and the global city. We conclude that Oku became more aware of his potential to act upon the development of his identity. The main concept that guided this interpretation was that of reterritorialization, as proposed by Kit Dobson (2006).