18 Diasporic Poetry
Dr. Swagata Bhattacharya
In this chapter we shall discuss:
- The meaning and origin of the term ‘diaspora’.
- The background of various diasporas such as the Indo-Caribbean, the South Asian and the Chinese-Japanese diasporas
- Short biographies of Ramabai Espinet, Krisantha Sri Bhaggiyadatta, Roy Miki, Frederic Wah, Dionne Brand and George Elliott Clarke
- Critical appreciation of twelve poems- ‘Hosay Night’, ‘A Nowhere Place’, ‘Winter ‘84’, ‘In the Valley of the Towers’, ‘Make It New’, ‘Kiyooka’, ‘Race, To Go’, ‘How to Hunt’, ‘Stateless’, ‘Epigrams to Ernesto Cardenal in Defense of Claudia’, ‘Everything is Free’ and ‘Exile’.
Diaspora: Meaning and Origin
The first mention of the word diaspora can be traced to the Septuagint, the translation of the Hebrew Bible or the Christian Old Testament into Koine Greek (3 – 2 century BC) The Septuagint contained a phrase – “ese diaspora en pasais basileias tes ges”, which translates into English as “thou shalt be a dispersion in all kingdoms of the earth”. The use of the word began to develop from this original sense. The word diaspora is derived from joining the Greek word ‘dia’ and the infinitive ‘speirein’ to mean “to spread, to scatter or to disperse”. The etymological meaning of the word makes it a term to describe scattered and/ or dispersed people across the globe.
Until the early 1960s, diaspora as a term remained confined to the Judeo-Christian traditions. In 1966, for the first time, the concept of African diaspora was introduced to the world by George Shepperson in his classic article ‘The African Abroad or the African Diaspora’. The popularization of the term within African Studies led to its boosted usage in various disciplines of the Humanities. Since the 1980s, scholars in disciplines such as anthropology, linguistics and of course literature, used the term to relate to expatriate ethnic or cultural or religious groups and communities.
Canada, commonly known as a land of immigrants, is home to a large number of diasporas spread across the nation. By a diaspora what is now generally referred to is a group of people having a common point of origin and sharing a common dream of returning to that original homeland. The Indo-Caribbean, the South Asian diaspora, the Chinese and Japanese diaspora, the Caribbean diaspora and the African diaspora are among the major diasporas prevalent in the socio-political-cultural scenario of Canada.
Background of Indo-Caribbean Diaspora:
When slavery was abolished in 1833, the British plantations in Guyana and Trinidad urgently needed labour to meet the severe shortage of workers. India offered itself as an obvious major alternative source of labour. In areas where land was scarce, such as the Caribbean islands, newly freed slaves were forced back to work on the plantations. In areas where land was plentiful such as Guyana, Suriname and Trinidad, former slaves took up independent subsistence farming. The need for plantation workers was supplied in part by the system of indented labour. Natives of India agreed to work for a fixed number of years in one of the former colonies in exchange for a meager wage and lodging. Indian labour immigration to Guyana took place in 1838 and to Trinidad in 1845. Most labourers came from the northern and eastern parts of India, though a sizable minority came from the Tamil and Telugu speaking regions of the south. They were mostly Hindus but there were very few Muslims also. In the 1840s, labourers from India started coming to Guyana in South America, and to Mauritius off the coast of Africa; in the 1860s to the British colony of Natal in South Africa; in the 1870s to the Dutch colony of Surinam, and in the 1880s to Fiji. The indenture system was finally abolished in 1917, though immigration to colonial areas continued even after that. Even today, the people of India constitute more than forty percent of the population in Guyana and Trinidad.
Initially, missionary activities were met with resistance from the East Indians who desired to retain their culture and ethnic identity. Presbyterian Mission began working among the Guyanese East Indians in 1885 and in Trinidad in 1867. A Canadian missionary, John Morton, headed the Presbyterian Mission in Trinidad. He succeeded in converting most East Indians into Presbyterians.
Much of the Indo-Caribbean exodus from Guyana and Trinidad, chiefly to the United Kingdom and Canada, began in the 1960s. It was the result of ethnic tension between ‘blacks’ and East Indians in the two newly independent Caribbean nations of Guyana and Trinidad. This was the period when Pierre Trudeau’s policy of Multiculturalism seemed to welcome third world immigrants into Canada. One of the most prominent poets of the Indo-Caribbean diaspora in Canada is Ramabai Espinet.
Ramabai Espinet
The Indo-Caribbean-Canadian poet, novelist, essayist and critic Ramabai Espinet (1948-) was born in San Fernando, Trinidad and Tobago. She came to Canada to study at York University and got her doctoral degree from the University Of West Indies, Trinidad and Tobago. At present, she teaches English at Seneca College. Her first book of poems Nuclear Seasons (1991) established her as a poet of eminence. Princess of Spadina (1992), Ninja’s Carnival (1993) are among her other books of poetry. Her debut novel The Swinging Bridge (2003) is a landmark in her literary career.
Hosay Night
Ramabai Espinet’s poems may be analyzed best under the heading of ‘cultural memory’(since in her works no memory is individual, she speaks of a vast collective memory related to and rooted in cultures, both Indian and Creole). The history of migration of indentured labour, and a subsequent double migration led to a sense of double displacement and confusion among poets like Espinet. The political need to invent and identity forms the basis of her poem ‘Hosay Night’. Physically present in Canada, the protagonist of the poem unlocks the “rusty iron lock of memory” to witness Muharram in the streets of Port of Spain. ‘Hosay’, coming from Hossain, Prophet Muhammad’s grandson, was a night festival in Trinidad. It was an occasion for celebration by a mixed population. But the memories of celebration are interwoven with other kinds of memory, the ones which are like “the cutting edge of bitter cane” . Those memories are the ones related to the reality of poverty, suffering and exploitation of the ancestors. The poet sometimes becomes a small girl, sometimes a small boy wandering along the streets of Trinidad, watching the ‘tadjah’s, the lights, the sounds and the drums. This is the poet’s journey of memory. Once it’s over, she returns from her psychic space to the physical one. Her sense of homelessness and the painful process of adapting to her new homeland is manifested in every line – “we lived alone”, “this land is home to me/ now homeless, a true refugee”.
A Nowhere Place
Ramabai Espinet’s ‘A Nowhere Place’ echoes the same deep-rooted feeling of non- belongingness. She deliberately uses the word ‘refugee’ to drive home the enormity of the cultural dispossession of the Indo-Caribbeans. They are “strangers everywhere”, victims of “misplacement/ of displacement”. They are neither Caribbean nor Indian. The displaced people suffered due to their stubborn inclination to retain their ethnic cultural identity. Thus, what could have been their advantage, worked against them and they could never become Caribbean. They lived apart, remained politically inactive and uninvolved in the mainstream of the Afro- Caribbean struggle. Thus, generally whenever Caribbean culture is discussed or imaged, the Indo-Caribbean community finds a “nowhere place”. They are akin to thieves, they are declared shameless, they are the usurpers of land. They have always been charged with these allegations without anyone realizing that they actually have no land of their own, that they actually belong nowhere.
South Asian Diaspora:
The earliest South Asian immigrants to Canada were railway workers and lumber men who were packed off in large numbers from India and China in the 1800s because white labourers refused to be employed in those perilous and meagerly paid jobs such as railway construction. Since then, South Asian immigrants have always been in demand in the Canadian labour market. Most South Asians in Canada trace their lineage back to India. Approximately around the period between 1905 and 1908, some five thousand South Asians arrived in British Columbia. They were obviously lured by economic prospects. Throughout the early 1900s, a set of deliberate restrictive laws prohibited much South Asian immigration. However, by the 1960s and 1970s restrictions were gradually loosened and immigration legislation in 1962 and 1967 substantially liberalized South Asian migration in Canada. Before 1962, most immigrants from South Asia were men from Punjab. After 1962, the influx was more balanced between men and women. Besides Sikhs from Punjab, educated Hindus from Gujarat, Bombay and Delhi came to Canada, as well as Muslims from Pakistan and Bangladesh and Buddhists from Sri Lanka.
Krishantha Sri Bhaggiyadatta
He is a Canadian poet of Sri Lankan origin who lives in Toronto. His publications include Domestic Bliss (1982), The Only Minority is the Bourgeoisie (1985) and The 52nd State of Amnesia (1992). He writes for The Toronto South Asian Review.
Winter 84
Krisantha Sri Bhaggiyadatta’s ‘Winter ’84’ is an ironical poem which paints a picture of stark reality faced by immigrants in multicultural Canada. The poem is in the form of a conversation between a white Canadian store owner and a coloured immigrant client. It has the typical suspense peculiar to Bhaggiyadatta’s poems. When the client tries to strike a casual conversation with the store owner by saying that the weather is too cold, he gets the reply that it is not what it used to be. This simple remark makes the client feel nervous. He starts thinking that any moment he might be accused of bringing about this undesirable change in weather. After the passage of a few anxious moments, the store owner replies that since America has sent a man to the moon, the weather has changed. Like a typical old man, the shopkeeper detested human interference in the course of nature. His innocent reply released all tension and anxiety and his client left the store feeling hugely relieved. It might be said that this man was thinking too negatively. However, the poem is an indication of what coloured immigrants have to go through in their daily lives where they are accused for anything and everything that occurs in the land they have migrated to. Immigrants get used to being blamed so much that it is not an exaggeration for them to think that they might even be accused for a change in weather. The poem is from the point of view of a coloured immigrant who has become used to finding himself in a no man’s land everywhere.
In the Valley of the Towers
In the poem ‘In the Valley of the Towers’, the valley refers to the urban landscape of Toronto surrounded on all sides by pillars of prosperity and richness. It is the place where an immigrant finds himself surrounded by banks, noises and rustle of a busy city life. It is a place full of tourists, full of liveliness and joy. In the backdrop of a beautiful scenery one can see Latin music being played by a Cuban band, women singing “songs from all over the world”. The sights and sounds of Toronto are intended to show people that it is a multicultural place where people from all parts of the world move around happily. Among these people the poet stands alone observing the crowd munching on fast food, the hectic schedule of busy people moving to and fro from the ten storied parking lots. Despite such liveliness, one building arrests the poet’s attention – it is the Strathcona Hotel. The Strathcona Hotel is that notorious place in the heart of Toronto where immigrants are confined before deportation and where several of them had killed themselves. Amidst such life and gaiety, the immigrant poet finds it difficult not to remember the darkness and gloominess of the Strathcona Hotel which Canadians seem to overlook in their daily activities. It reminds the poet that no matter how much an immigrant takes part in the daily activities of Toronto, any day he or she might find himself or herself inside that dreaded place.
Japanese Diaspora
Since the 1800s, Chinese and Japanese workers had been employed in the construction of Canadian Pacific Railway. With the increasing number of Asians in the country, the Canadian government felt that their white supremacy was being threatened. Anti-Asian riots started against the unwanted Asian ethnic groups which included Indians, Chinese as well as the Japanese. In 1908, an immigration order was passed by which Asians could land in Canada only by continuous journey and the only means of transport that allowed continuous journey was the Canadian Pacific Railway. It was forbidden to sell tickets to Asians. On top of that, the Immigration Act of 1910 imposed the law that every Asian had to possess two hundred dollars as head tax in order to enter Canada. Despite such stringent measures, the Indian, the Chinese and the Japanese migration to Canada continued. The fatal blow to the Japanese-Canadians came much later in 1941. The Pearl Harbour bombing in December 1941 officially made Japan an enemy of Canada. The Canadian public as such had failed to differentiate between South Asians and the Japanese. Post the Pearl Harbour incident, animosity towards the Japanese became so deep in British Columbia that they were driven out of the place which automatically took away their living and pushed to Nanton in Alberta. As the Japanese lived off the sea, their shift to the prairies destroyed their normal rhythm of life. This incident bore such a deep scar that most Japanese Canadians failed to get out of the trauma.
Roy Miki
A sansei or third generation Japanese-Canadian, Roy Miki (1942-) was born in Winnipeg a few months after his family was forced to evacuate their home in Haney, British Columbia. The incident disturbed him as a child and got him politically interested from a very young age. Miki became the spokesperson for the Japanese-Canadian Redress Movement. Educated in universities such as the university of Manitoba and the Simon Fraser University, he earned his doctoral degree from the University of British Columbia. Miki is a professor of English at the University of British Columbia and the founder editor of the well known literary journal Line (recently renamed as West Coast Line). He is also the editor of Pacific Windows: Collected Poems of Roy. K. Kiyooka (1997). Miki has been the chair of the Racial Minority Writers’ Committee in Canada and has co-ordinated “Writing Thru Race: A Conference for First Nations Writers and Writers of Color” (1994). A highly acclaimed poet, his collections of poetry include Saving Face: Poems Selected 1976-1988 (1991), Market Rinse (1993), Random Access File (1995) and Surrender (2001). He has also edited This is My Own: Letters to Wes and Other Writings on Japanese Canadians (1985).
Make it New
In the poem ‘Make it New’, the poet urges to create a new world where everyone finds a comfortable space for himself/herself. The poem gives precise attention to language and formal elements and addresses the need to re-conceptualize space. This space includes both the formal space of a poem and the actual space in the literal meaning of the term. It is this space in which the poet questions the inherited notions of power, authority and subjectivity. He feels that the new era shall make way for new tactics of questioning and of survival for the marginalized. In this age already the flowers have perished, the branches have truncated, and the majestic eagles have all disappeared. Centuries of oppression and discrimination have resulted in this pitiable state. This is not the age of natural beauty, this is the age of statistics, documents and daily headlines that speak of violence and destruction. Still the poet feels that the earth is not yet heavy with the weight of dead bodies. He feels that there is still hope to start afresh, to start something new. The fumes of destruction might be temporary and there may be a new sunrise soon. It is important how this new era is perceived. To the poet, the perception has to be new and optimistic.
Kiyooka
Roy Kenzie Kiyooka (1926-1994) was a Nisei or second generation Japanese-Canadian. He was born in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan and raised in Alberta. His father was a samurai who had migrated to Canada. After 1942, the family was uprooted and Kiyooka could never complete his formal education. However, he grew up to be a renowned painter, poet, photographer and multimedia artist.
The poem is dedicated to Fred Wah, a fellow Chinese-Canadian poet. In this poem, too, the poet experiments with the form and structure and, in turn, creates a peculiar rhythm. This has been deliberately done to distinguish the poem of a marginalized poet from that of the mainstream. The poem is not directly about Roy Kiyooka, the poet. It is more about what coloured minorities feel and go through in Canada. It is about a sense of loss, not particularly material but a kind of spiritual loss which can only be felt by a person whose existence feels threatened. It seems that coloured people are not taken notice of and not acknowledged in the society where they are living. It seems that they are always ignored and often accidentally acknowledged because of their distinct difference in appearance. Kiyooka himself had suffered discrimination as a Japanese-Canadian and so has Roy Miki. Their lineage and their personal experiences in ‘multicultural’ Canada has bound them together and thus, Miki names his poem on discrimination after Kiyooka. It is for the same reason that the poem is dedicated to Fred Wah, a fellow poet who would understand and appreciate what Miki wants to convey through his poem. The form of the poem in itself announces a rebellion against the standard norm and so do the language and the structure. All this together spells out loudly that these poets of colour have faced enough discrimination and humiliation to revolt for a change.
Frederic James Wah
Frederic James Wah (1939-) is a Chinese-Canadian poet, novelist and scholar born in Saskatchewan. He was raised in British Columbia by a Chinese father and a Swedish-Canadian mother. His mixed heritage has often come up as a theme in many of his creative works. Wah studied literature and music at the University of British Columbia where he was the founder- editor of TISH, a poetry newsletter started by the students of the University of British Columbia in 1961. Among his works, Lardeau (1965), Waiting for Saskatchewan (1985) and Diamond Grill (1996) are the most famous.
Race, To Go
Fred Wah’s ‘Race, To Go’ is a protest against racism faced by the coloured minorities of Canada. In this anti-racist poem, the poet vehemently protests the way coloured immigrants are harassed on the basis of their physical features. Certain characteristic traits are pointed out and the visible minorities are made fun of on the basis of them. For example, in this poem the poet points out how the curry becomes a matter of joke and persecution for the visible minorities. The slanting eyes of the Chinese are made fun of, along with their food habits such as taking hot rice or the practice of eating with their fingers. All these habits are singled out as practices of particular culture which is alien and unacceptable to the mainstream white Canadians. The ‘others’ are encouraged to maintain their ethnicities and these differences are lauded in the name of multiculturalism which, in reality, gives the whites a wider opportunity to insult the others and thrive on their superiority. This is something which the poet feels must go but in reality he finds no way how to go about it. The visible minorities have to face stupid, insulting questions from the whites as long as they fail to erase the difference between the physical features which is an impossibility.
How to Hunt
‘How to Hunt’ is also an anti-racist poem which shows how the visible minorities are hunted down on the basis of their skin colour and physical features. It is always easy to track them down and pinpoint them as a minority. Though the poet feels that the distinction is actually a matter of the mind, in the actual society this distinction does matter a lot. A person belonging to a visible minority status cannot afford to forget that he is alone and surrounded by this discrimination. It is a difficult task, yet it is better if he recognizes himself as a person of colour beforehand so that he becomes mentally prepared to accept the assault that is sure to be faced by him, sooner or later. Nothing else, no other identity is bigger than that of his race and he should prepare himself to accept it. Unless he gets accustomed to it, he shall never be able to go about in this world.
Dionne Brand
Dionne Brand (1953-) is a Canadian poet, novelist, essayist and documentary maker of Caribbean origin. She was born in Guayaguayare, Trinidad and Tobago. At the age of seventeen, Brand migrated to Canada to study at the University of Toronto. Apart from being an academician, Brand labels herself as a black, lesbian anti-racist feminist. A prolific poet, her works include No Language is Neutral (1990), Chronicles of the Hostile Sun (1984), Thirsty (2002), Inventory (2006), etc. In Another Place, Not Here (1996) and What We All Long For (2005) are her famous novels. She has also co-authored Rivers Have Sources, Trees Have Roots (1986) with Krisantha Sri Bhaggiyadatta.
Stateless
Dionne Brand’s ‘Stateless’ is a small poem of eight lines clearly stating the position of a coloured immigrant in multicultural Canada. The poet declares that she has a definite idea about the place of her birth – the Caribbean islands. She even goes to the extent of stating the exact location of her birth place – “15 degrees above the equator”. On top of that, she has a Canadian passport and has lived all her adult life in Canada. Still, she considers herself stateless. This is because despite being considered a Canadian citizen on paper, the poet is unable to accept herself as a Canadian citizen. Her daily life in Canada and the treatment she receives there refrains her from considering herself a ‘Canadian’. It is needless to mention here that it is not just the poet’s personal prejudices that have created hindrances on her path of becoming a citizen of Canada. It is Canada herself and the ‘Canadians’ who have made her feel that it is not her home. Brand’s poem also urges her readers to take notice of the sad fact which is a part of every immigrant’s life. It is the fact that once they leave their place of birth, they lose the right to return forever. If they fail to make their adopted home their own, they remain stateless throughout their lives.
Epigrams to Ernesto Cardenal in Defense of Claudia
The poem begins by stating a line – “On being told that being Black is being bitter”. The poem is a response to this statement, this common notion that blacks are bitter. The protagonist of the poem says that she has been asked time and again about the reason of her bitterness and has also been advised to give it up in order to find the world a beautiful place. It is as if the bitterness of the blacks has made the world less beautiful. She explains that the blacks are not bitter out of their own desire; bitterness is not something that is treasured and cherished by them, it is not an integral part of their essential blackness. Rather, it has become something which cannot be taken away from them. It is the result of being tortured, bullied, separated, repulsed and destroyed for centuries. Now it has become something inseparable from the blacks. It has been mixed up in such a manner in their skins and welded to their bones that they do not have any control over it anymore. Rather, it is bitterness which has taken control over them. It is the oppression of centuries that has taken such a form of rage and bitterness, swelling in the hearts of the blacks. Thus, those who advise blacks to give up bitterness must be careful of what they say. They must know the rage that singes the hearts of the blacks. It is not without a reason that the blacks resort to violence.
George Elliott Clarke
George Elliott Clarke (1960-) is a ‘black’ Canadian poet and playwright born in Nova Scotia. He studied at the University of Waterloo and earned his PhD in English Literature from Queen’s University. He teaches English at the University of Toronto and writes on black communities in and around Nova Scotia. Clarke introduced through his writings what he terms as “Africanadian Literature”. His books of poems include Salt Water Spirituals and Deeper Blues (1983), Lush Green, Blue Exile: Fugitive Poems (1994), I and I (2009).
Everything is Free
George Elliott Clarke’s ‘Everything is Free’ is a happy-go-lucky poem in which the poet states that in this world whatever brings happiness is free. He says that it is only those who are lonely who need money. He insists that since everyone is free, one must not try to bind one’s love. He urges everybody to surrender force since force can never vanquish one’s freedom. The beauty of nature – the melting sun, the refreshing scent of flowers, the rain, everything is free and equally accessible to all. He feels that since love and life are both free, one should learn to enjoy it. Through this poem, he urges his readers to celebrate freedom and respect it.
Exile
‘Exile’ is thematically similar to Dionne Brand’s ‘Epigrams to Ernesto Cardenal in Defense of Claudia’. In this poem, the poet expresses his anguish at the discrimination being faced as a black. He finds himself treated with discrimination because of the slave blood running through his veins. The history of slavery and racism has scorched the brains of all the blacks in such a manner that they cannot afford to lead a normal life. He thinks that as a member of the black community, all his possessions have been framed in nostalgia, all his known faces are now the faces of the dead existing only in photographs. All the lovers of the past are now lying in the ditches, slain and dead. Their eyes which once were filled with tears are now dry. They are like dead leaves curled up, waiting to be lighted into a fire. It is this flame of anger which seethes beneath the souls of the blacks. They are waiting to burst out into flames, they are waiting to express themselves and make themselves be heard.
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References:
- Brand, Dionne and Krisantha Sri Bhaggiyadatta. Rivers Have Sources, Trees Have Roots: Speaking of Racism .Toronto: Crosscultural Communication Center, 1986.
- Braziel, Jana Evans. Diaspora: An Introduction. London: Wiley-Blackwell, 2008. Espinite, Ramabai. Nuclear Seasons. Toronto: Sister Vision Press, 1991.
- Kamboureli, Smaro ed. Making a Difference: Canadian Multicultural Literature in English Second Edition. Ontario: Oxford University Press, 2007.
- McGifford, Diane ed. The Geography of Voice: An Anthology of South Asian-Canadian Writing.Toronto: TSAR, 1992.
- McGifford, Diane and Judith Kearns ed. Shakti’s Words: An Anthology of South Asian-Canadian Women’s Poetry. Toronto: TSAR, 1990.
- Nurse, Donna Bailey ed. Revival: An Anthology of Black Canadian Writing. Toronto: McClelland&Stewart, 2006.
- Silvera, Makeda ed. The Other Woman: Women of Color in Contemporary Canadian Literature. Toronto: Sister Vision Press, 1994.