Diasporic Identities on the Contemporary Multi-ethnic Canadian Stage1
II. Diasporic Experiences in the Canadian Multicultural Context
In their insightful criticism , Stuart Hall and Homi K. Bhabha offer new ways o f thinking the diasporic condition in cultural and postcolonial studies. The term “diaspora” (originally from the Greek, m eaning “to disperse”) refers mainly to the political and cultural situations arising from W estern colonialism. Indeed, diasporic moves are defined as a displacem ent from the underprivileged former colonized Third W orld to the m etropolitan centres o f the formerly colonialist West. The practices o f slaveiy and indenture resulted in world-w ide colonial diasporas. Consequently, the descendants o f the diasporic m ovem ents generated by slavery and other colonial practices have developed their own distinctive cultures which both preserve and often extend their culture o f origin.5 Creolized versions o f their own practices evolved, m odifying (and being m odified by) indigenous cultures with which they came into contact. The develop
m ent o f diasporic cultures thus necessarily questions essentialist models, interrogating the ideology o f a unified and ‘natural’ cultural norm, one that underpins the centre/m argin model o f colonialist discourse. (Ashcroft 1999: 70).
In the context o f this essay, diasporic experiences describe m igratory m ovem ents from underprivileged form er “occupation”
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Paradoxically, even though the degree o f suffering and pain were different, the Colonizers who settled in the colonies also often extended and developed their culture o f origin.
Debunking the Multicultural Dream 95 colonies such as the Caribbean islands or India to the once “settler- invader” colony o f Canada. Although Canada does not belong to the first or old world o f Europe, it is not poor enough to be included in the third world. Canada is thus located in an awkw ard “second w orld” position that is neither one nor the other. Colonizers and Colonized at the same tim e, Canadians find them selves in a complex situation that unm asks the paradoxical nature o f the term ‘postcolo
nialism. ’ Indeed, Canadians were colonized at the same tim e as they them selves were colonising indigenous peoples. The phrase post
colonial thus resonates with all the ambiguity and com plexity o f the many different diasporic experiences it implies. (G ilbert and Tom pkins 1996: 1-5). The question is then how, from their specific position in the Canadian context, the playw rights under consideration strike back, resist, and challenge the violent attem pts to assim ilate, erase and silence them.
While until recently African Canadian com m unities had been characterised by absence, and erasure on the stage, anthologies such as Testifyin ’ (Volumes I and II), edited by leading African Canadian playwright, Djanet Sears, reveal that in the last decades Afri- Canadian playw rights have powerfully em erged on the Canadian theatrical scene in order to testify to the existence o f diverse and dynamic A fri-Canadian experiences. Until the significant West Indian immigration o f the past 15 years, m ost Canadian Blacks had entered Canada from the US. (K rauter and Davis 1978: 43-47). As Sears indicates, “the eradication o f the ‘preferred nationalities’
immigration policy in Canada, and the introduction o f the ‘point system ’ in the 1960s, brought about a significant increase in the population o f Caribbean imm igrants, m ost o f whom were Toronto- bound” (Sears 2000: ix).
Likewise, the South Asian presence in Canada has become increasingly predom inant and influential in the field o f theatre and drama. N um erous plays and anthologies by South Asian Canadian playwrights have been successfully produced and published in recent years. Poet and playw right U m a Param eswaran, for instance, has edited critical volum es such as An Introduction to South Asian Canadian Literature and S a d it Drama: Plays by South Asian Canadians, which both attest to the grow ing influence o f this ethnic
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com m unity in the Canadian literary landscape.6 As Vassanji explains, the South Asian presence in Canada is the result o f a m assive m igratory m ovem ent across geographical, political, and cultural barriers and originates predom inantly from the countries of South A sia - India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka - as well as those o f the Caribbean and East and South Africa.7
First produced at T oronto’s Theatre Passe M uraille in 1981, Prodigals in a Promised Land was one o f the very few plays from African Canadian playw rights to appear on the Canadian stage. In this play, Hector Bunyan exam ines the utopian depiction o f Canada from the perspective o f a family o f Caribbean extraction. As such, Prodigals dram atizes the rift in the transplanted family, which em igrated to Canada from Jam aica in search o f a better life and education. As the play’s title indicates, Theo yearns for intellectual fulfilm ent, as well as social and economic recognition. On the other hand, G loria has reluctantly abandoned her homeland to follow her husband to Toronto. From the play’s outset, the author emphasizes contrasting attitudes towards the diasporic experience: an optimistic and idealist vision on the one hand, and negative and painful feelings o f sacrifice on the other.
As the plot further reveals, the reality o f Toronto turns out to be quite different from Theo and G loria’s dreams: “Ten years ago when we came here, life w asn’t easy as we thought it would be; our dreams were too big for a tiny room ” (156).8 T h eo’s hope o f obtaining a PhD degree is unlikely to be realized while Gloria has becom e a prostitute to bring money into the household. M oreover, in the p lay ’s numerous flashbacks, the couple appears on the verge o f exploding under the pressure o f their constant struggle to cope with their new Canadian
6 Uma Parameswaran coined the term “Saclit,” which stands for South Asian Canadian Literature.
7 For a detailed historical overview o f the South Asian Diaspora as well as a brief survey o f the works written by South Asian Canadian poets, novelists and playwrights, the reader might fruitfully turn to Parameswaran’s book, An Intro
duction to South-Asian-Canadian Literature, East as well as to Vassanji’s work.
A Meeting o f Streams: South Asian Canadian Literature.
8 All quotes from the play come from Bunyan’s Prodigals in a Promised L a n d - D. Sears, ed., Testifyin’: Contemporary African Drama. Vol. I. Toronto:
Playwrights Canada Press: 151-214.
Debunking the Multicultural Dream 97 environm ent. In Flashback Two for instance, T heo’s bitterness echoes the ordeal o f any imm igrant looking for a stable job in Canada: “I couldn’t even get a jo b as a floor-cleaner, probably because the floors are Canadian and I would clean them with a different accent” (163). Caught in a vicious circle, imm igrants are unable to find a job: they either lack Canadian experience, are over- or under-qualified.
W hen G loria announces her pregnancy in Flashback Three, Theo’s reaction bespeaks his profound disillusion in the Canadian m ulticultural dream:
What will be that child’s future? [...] Well let me tell you:
it will be that of a victim, the victim of a father catching his ass at menial jobs and a mother who couldn’t wait, because she had to justify the sole reason for her existence: that she could breed. (169)
As this passage indicates, T heo’s initial optim istic vision o f an improved life has significantly changed. N ot only is he unable to rejoice upon hearing that he is a father, he also denigrates his wife.
By pointing out G loria’s “sole reason for existence” in Toronto, Theo underlines that the opportunities o f imm igrant men and women are still highly biased and unequal in contem porary Canada.
Forced to “become a predator to survive” (173), Theo has “become the worst example o f indifference” (172). In the end, Theo even decides to move out o f the house and relinquish his PhD studies for menial jobs, while Gloria decides to go back to her home country, abandoning her daughter and husband behind. As this story shows, far from being a ‘promised land,’ the real Canadian city o f Toronto constitutes a merciless environment in which the young couple cannot adapt. Bunyan thus crudely depicts the often naive misconceptions o f a tolerant m ulticultural Canada. Moreover, the play’s non-linear and fragmented structure also challenges the idea o f the well-made play.
Similarly to Prodigals, Rana Bose’s Baba Jacques Dass and Turmoil at Cote-Des-Neiges Cemetery, first staged at the Centaur Theatre in Montreal in 1987, mirrors the multiple contradictions contained in the utopian vision o f the Canadian multicultural dream. Co
founder and artistic director o f Montreal Serai, Rana Bose came from
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Calcutta to Montreal in 1977.9 Like his other plays - On the Double (1993) and Five or Six Characters in Search o f Toronto (1994), to cite but a few - Baba Jacques highlights the theme o f protest in order to shed light on the shortcomings that perpetuate an unfair society. By depicting the difficulties o f a writer from an Indian heritage to be published in Montreal, Toronto or even New York, Bose skilfully reveals the systemic ghettoization o f the South Asian Canadian Other, a marginalization that is both self-imposed and government imposed.
In contrast to the fragm ented plotline o f Prodigals, Baba Jacques displays a fairly chronological storyline. However, many sections of the play take place in Cotes-des-N eiges cemetery, a suburban area of M ontreal, where literary ghosts intrude the realist fabric o f the play.
In this m ysterious world, N eela and Binoy confront stereotyped visions o f their ethnicity, embodied by the ghosts, and eventually reconnect with their home country, India, through the stories narrated by the French Canadian mystic, Jacques Mercier.
For instance, Mr Fraser, one o f the ghosts, turns into an immi
grant officer and thereby conveys the naive and racist ideas behind official procedures o f border entry into Canada:
Mr Fraser: [...] where is your turban?
Binoy: I am not a Sikh, sir [...]
Mr. Fraser: Oh yeah, that’s what they are all saying [...]
until they get their status
[...] Who is going to be responsible for you?
Binoy: I am a skilled machinist sir, I am an experienced NC programmer. (199-200)
9 For a detailed overview o f Rana B o se’s career and playwriting, see Pa- rameswaran’s interview o f Rana Bose, “I Believe in Zapping the Audience,” in Canadian Theatre Review [CTR] 94, as well as B ose’s “Theatre Notes on a Bright October Morning in Montreal,” in CTR 94.
10 The theatre o f protest developed by South Asian Canadians ow es its format to the people’s theatre movement in Bengal, led by Badal Sarcar, and the Marx
ist movement in India in the early decades o f the century. It also uses many o f the standard stage techniques and strategies used by Indian folk theatre over the centuries. While the plots m ove around the problems faced by South Asians and other ‘Visible minorities” in Canada, many o f the stage techniques are a trans
plant from India’s folk and popular traditions. For further details, see Parames- waran’s introduction in Sac/it Drama: Plays by South Asian Canadians.
Debunking the Multicultural Dream 99 Through such a conversation enacted on stage, the author forces the audience to confront the array o f stereotyped assum ptions held about the Indian O ther or the “O rient” in general. Bose thereby unveils the sim plistic nature o f these cliches while at the same tim e em phasizing the danger o f hom ogenization.
In addition to debunking stereotyped assum ptions, the presence o f ghosts is, as Lois Parkinson Zam ora notes, “ inherently oppositional because they represent an assault on the scientific and m aterialistic assum ptions o f W estern m odernity” (Zam ora 1995: 498). As in magic realist fictions, ghosts in their many guises unsettle the spectator’s / reader’s expectations by asking them to “ look beyond the limits o f the know able” (ib.). In other words, while Bunyan’s theatre proved challenging in its fragm ented structure, B ose’s play subverts traditional dram atic codes in its reliance on ghosts to debunk stereotypical assum ptions.
Rana Bose co-founded the M ontreal-based theatre company, Teesri Duniya (Third World) with Rahul Varma. In recent decades, Varma wrote and co-authored num erous plays in English: Trading Injuries (1993), Counter Offence (1996) and Bhopal (2005), among others. His early play Job Stealer focuses on the controversy over jobs allegedly taken by refugees and imm igrants from born-in- Canada Canadians. Like m any o f the above-m entioned plays, Job Stealer exposes disillusionm ent, racism, and intolerance encountered upon arrival on C anadian shores.
From the outset, the play’s heterogeneous cast o f characters illustrates the authors’ willingness to represent a multiplicity o f voices, religions, cultures and social backgrounds: Martha and Julio, a caring couple; Nalla, a Sri Lankan male refugee; Kabul, a Moslem male refugee; Anna, a European refugee; and Jing, a woman o f Oriental heritage (99). However, as Varma him self warns, representative voices o f particular communities can be dangerous as these “promote a general, homogenous representation o f the community and thereby obscure the creative plurality that actually exists within it” (Varma 1985: 25-28).
In this play, even though V arm a relies on global labels such as
“O riental” or “ European,” the characters do not so much speak as representatives o f a particular comm unity as serve to illustrate the universality o f the vicissitudes to which any immigrant is subjected:
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JULIO: El Salvador, G uatem ala, Chile.
A N N A : Haiti, South A frica, Ethiopia.
BA B U L : Bangladesh, Sri Lanka.
N A L L A : Iran, Lebanon.
JING: V ietnam , Kam puchea. (1 0 4 )
The passage quoted above shows the protagonists stand for refugees com ing from any country plagued by political tensions and war, em phasizing the diasporic aspect o f the play.
As a whole, the play denounces the vicissitudes endured by all im m igrants who arrive in Canada. In this sense, the Canadian immi
grant officers’ ruthless interrogations strongly reminds M r Frazer in B ose’s Baba Jacques: “ Stand up ... no sit down ... sit here... no stand ... line u p ... w alk ... stop” (106). Upon their arrival on Cana
dian soil, the refugees becom e voiceless victims. The protagonists’
subm issive obedience to a dehum anizing authority emphasizes their objectification. Besides, the various job interviews illustrate the vicious circle in which imm igrants are caught: “no immigration w ithout a job and no job w ithout Canadian experience” (Parames
waran 1998: 11). Rejected because they are “either overqualified or have no Canadian experience” (112), the im m igrants’ hardships and hum iliation strongly echo the struggles faced by Theo in Prodigals or even Binoy in Baba Jacques.
Drawing to a close, the play skilfully reminds the audience that Canada is largely a country o f immigrants. As Julio remarks, many Canadians ju st “got here a few years before us” (117). Determined to denounce the exploitation o f “cheap, dumb labour” (119), Job Stealer positively asserts that refugees do not steal but “create jobs!”
(123). To the stereotyped belief that refugees constitute a burden to
“be borne by Canadian tax payers” (109), V arm a offers a counter
image: refugees with “Two hands to w ork!” (126) slavering in incredibly harsh working conditions. Like in many o f V arm a’s other plays, Job Stealer ends on a note o f hope and reconciliation. The refugees “thank those who accepted us. The agencies and the people, and the nations” (126).
In their successful play, sistahs, which prem iered in Toronto at the Poor Alex Theatre in 1994, m axine bailey and sharon lewis offer yet another insight into Canadian diasporic experiences: they narrate
Debunking the Multicultural Dream 101 the throes and suffering o f five wom en coming from W est Africa and the Caribbean. As the other plays o f this essay, sistahs exposes the struggle to survive in the continuing racist and sexist realities o f contem porary Canada.
Through p lay ’s spatial and culinary m etaphors, the authors
“dram atize the psychic healing o f the wounds o f diaspora and slavery” (M aufort 2004: 62). The setting is a “warm, bright, large apartm ent” (2 8 1 )n in which a kitchen stands on the centre stage.12 M etaphorically, the stage becomes “a powerful testim ony o f Black w om en’s potential to nurture, nourish, restore the se lf and the com munity through transform ing rituals o f healing” (Davis 2000: 279).
Indeed, as a typically female communal area, the kitchen represents a symbolic space where wom en can care for their families, develop their creativity, and assert power. In cooking a traditional Caribbean soup, the women on stage engage in a process o f reconciliation with the past, renegotiation o f their sense o f self in the present, as well as re-assertion o f solidarity between generations o f Black women for the future.
Very much like the ingredients added to the soup in the course o f the performance, the five wom en enter the stage one at a time, in an order sim ilar to the one displayed in the prologue, ironically labelled
“Dessert.” The play’s subsequent 18 scenes, entitled “The Prepara
tion,” “Peeling, Chopping, Cutting,” “Boiling!,” “ Sim m ering,”
“Dishing,” and “N yam m ing,” gradually evolve at the same pace as the cooking itself. In other words, the perform ance is endowed with the symbolic qualities o f the structuring food metaphor. The play may stand for the soup itself - this hybrid mix o f actors/ingredients coming from different geographical spaces, whose m ultiple cultural heritages spice up the perform ance with a variety o f ‘flavours.’
Furtherm ore, the process o f food preparation m etaphorically symbolizes the com ing to term s with social and psychic traumas. In her lectures, Sandra revisits history and slavery through the lens o f contem porary feminism. Sandra’s struggle with her womb cancer is clearly related to “the wound o f slavery” (M aufort 2004: 63). The
11 All quotes com e from Bailey, M. and S. M. L ew is’s play, sistahs. - D.
Sears, ed., Testifyn’: Contemporary African Drama. Vol. I. Toronto: Play
wrights Canada Press: 2 7 8-328.
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protagonist’s assertion, “ I carry my story in my w om b” (283), indicates that Sandra needs to make peace with the ghosts o f the past in order to survive in the present.
The soup ritual is in fact m eant to discuss A ssita’s future in the hope o f finding a viable solution in case Sandra dies. Throughout the plot, the tense m other-daughter relationship evolves in parallel to the soup preparation. Sandra, a fem inist mother, fails to offer her daughter survival strategies that can help her avoid the m istakes o f the past. Ironically, Sandra wishes her daughter to help clean the house and forces her to participate in the cooking o f the soup; two typical tasks that have usually prevented wom en from playing a more constructive role in life. The authors thereby dem onstrate the difficulty o f escaping o ne’s condition and conditioning as a Black wom an entrapped in a particular type o f society.
Each in their own ways, the plays analyzed in this first section dram atize the tribulations associated to diasporic experiences. While dem ystifying the Canadian m ulticultural prom ises, they all challenge traditional dram atic codes through the fabric o f theatrical perfor
mance: fragm ented storyline {Prodigals or sistahs), ghostly appari
tions (Baba Jacques), or heterogeneous cast o f characters (Job Stealers or sistahs). As such, these works illustrate the subversive potential o f syncretism : a dynam ic process which critically appropriates elem ents from the m aster-codes o f the dominant cultures while ‘creolizing’ or ‘hybridizing’ them. By dis-articulating and de-centering the nation’s m ulticultural policy and master- discourses, the so-called m inority Others in fact re-articulate and re
centre their diasporic experiences as syncretic acts o f resistance.