Transcript Chang Rae-Lee, Native Speaker, historical context

Alberta, Ch 28, 190: dehumanizing labor
“city of wind” “blowing debris” “storm of dust”
“to the edge of the world, a place of angry air”
“skeletons” “Spartan plants” ”deliberate and
fierce” “whipping” “wind-battered”
196: child labor “I cannot tell about this time”
“new prison walls” “obedient as machines”
198: “Another year? Which year should we
choose for our healing?”
Polyphony: (Anglo)Canadian
voices/national identity
• Mr. & Mrs. Baker (222-226)
• Memo, Cooperative Com. On Japanese Canadians,
248-250
• 226: “Where do any of us come from in this cold
country? Oh Canada, whether it is admitted or not,
we come from you we come from you.” “We
come from the country that plucks its people out
like weeds and flings them into the roadside. . , ,
this land that is like every land”
Freud, “Mourning and Melancholia” 1916-17
• Melancholia: “mental disorder characterized by
severe depression, guilt, hopelessness, and
withdrawal,” severe pessimism”
• Both triggered by loss; mourning by death of
object; melancholia by loss of object still desired
and not dead, so ambivalent struggle/ exhaustion
between love and resentment at abandonment
• Naomi’s development from melancholia through
mourning to healing?
Naomi’s fear of speech, inability to speak,
emotional undevelopment (‘infantile
narcissism’), muteness
• ”Cat got your tongue”
• 42: Kingbird
• 189: “All of Aunt Emily’s words. . . are like
scratching in the barnyard.” “They do not touch us
where we are planted” “The words are not made
flesh. . . All my prayers disappear into space.”
• 243, “Our wordlessness was our mutual
destruction.”
Healing, recovery? How suggested, asserted,
none? 199 “Is there evidence for optimism?”
• 144-45: Rough Lock Bill, “never met a kid didn’t like
stories. Red skin, yellow skin, white skin, any skin. . .
Don’t make sense, do it, all this fuss about skin?”
• 243, “Love flows through the roots of the trees by our
graves.”
• 246, “This body of grief is not for for human
habitation. Let there be flesh. The SONG OF
MOURNING is not a lifelong song.”
• 248, epilogue: memorandum “value and dignity of
Canadian citizenship”—begins Bible, ends human
rights discourse.
Close reading: historical, social, literary
contexts, incorporating these to some of
suggested topics (8 points)
• Thematic contribution to larger work and canon.
• Stylistic, figurative, literary & linguistic elements
in context of other Asian American literary texts.
• Narrator/speaker; relationships between characters
portrayed, dramatic scene represented & other
relevant narrative aspects
• Interdisciplinary analysis incorporating immigrant
history, ethnic identity-formations, generational,
gender, social & psychological aspects