Canada and Beyond -- Vol. 06 (2017)

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10272/14956

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Now showing 1 - 8 of 8

Representations of Home in Obasan and Nihonjin: The Issei, Nisei, Sansei of Canada and Brazil
(Universidad de Huelva, 2017) Raynor, Cecily
Joy Kogawa’s Obasan (1981) and Oscar Nakasato’s Nihonjin (2011) are two novels that narrate the lives of Japanese diaspora in Canada and Brazil respectively. Both countries share a rich tradition of Japanese migration during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which, while distinct in important ways, has resulted in a significant body of cultural production. In this article, I examine spatiotemporal treatments of the home space in Obasan and Nihonjin, arguing that this realm serves two primary functions: 1) as a site for the expression and construction of identity 2) as a point of disruption and resistance in the face of cultural, linguistic and national alienation. Examining Japanese migration literature from a comparative lens sheds light on the past as a gateway to the present, while nuancing national discourses around race and ethnicity. Although these two narratives are separated by thousands of miles and thirty years in their publication dates, Japanese migrant tales from Brazil and Canada teach us diverse and intersecting lessons about ethnic heritage and cultural plurality. The domestic space is particularly critical for observing these crossings as its attention to language, food culture and other artifacts reveals a multi-layered experience
“Matando o Desconhecimento”: The Role of Culture in Brazil’s Relations with Canada and Beyond
(Universidad de Huelva, 2017) Hewitt, W. E.; Gomes, Inês C.
In recent years, observers in both Canada and Brazil have pointed to the benefits of further developing relations between the two countries. Despite diplomatic efforts to promote productive interchange however, levels of trade – perhaps the most salient barometer of relationship health – have remained both modest and relatively stagnant. This is true, moreover, in spite of broad advances made by Brazil in particular in relationship building elsewhere. This paper seeks to explore the roots of this seeming paradox by examining the factors that appear to have facilitated the growth of diplomatic and trade relations between Brazil and partners other than Canada – specifically in Africa; relations rooted primarily in a strategy of “cultural approximation”. The potential role of cultural factors in promoting the Canada-Brazil relationship is then explored in this light, focusing on recent efforts to support enhanced educational and scientific interchange between the two countries
"It’s some cannibal thing": Canada and Brazil in Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam Trilogy
(Universidad de Huelva, 2017) Jacobson Konefall, Jessica
Brazilian modernist Oswald de Andrade’s artistic and philosophical manifesto of Brazilian cannibalism best enables readers to grasp Canadian author Margaret Atwood’s trilogy MaddAddam, in terms of its treatment of settler and Indigenous relationality in its satirical posthuman world. MaddAddam is a work of speculative fiction that satirically predicts possible outcomes of early 21st century neoliberalism. A survival tale, the trilogy articulates its angle of vision through motifs of literal and figurative cannibalism, highlighting settler and Indigenous relationality in the Americas. While situated in Canadian literary traditions, the work engages Brazilian anthropophagic (cannibalist) strategies to craft an ending that is ambivalent about settler futures
Introduction. Canada, Brazil, and Beyond: extending the dialogue
(Universidad de Huelva, 2017) Brydon, Diana; Nunes, Vanessa
The history of relations between Canada and Brazil has been erratic, full of stops and starts, “advances and setbacks” (Hewitt and Gomes, this issue) and often marred by misunderstandings, business rivalries, and the very colonial circumstances that make comparison between the two countries so fascinating. As Rosana Barbosa affirms in her book Brazil and Canada: Economic, Political, and Migratory Ties, 1820s to 1970s, “neither Brazilian nor Canadian scholarship has given the topic of Canadian-Brazilian relations the attention it deserves” (xiii). This special issue aspires to remedy that neglect and spark further interest in the topic
In the Rhythm of Cree Samba: transculturality and decolonization in Tomson Highway´s Theatre
(Universidad de Huelva, 2017) Cunha, Rubelise da
The voice that comes from Indigenous artists, writers and activists in the Americas, in artistic works which can be related to Mary Louise Pratt’s concept of autoethnographic expression (1992), inevitably engages with discourses constructed about them in order to reconstruct or deconstruct colonial narratives. However, some artists seem to go beyond the discussion of a colonizing voice versus a response from the colonized, since they engage with practices that include Indigenous knowledge in a global perspective. This is the case of Cree Canadian artist Tomson Highway. He creates a transcultural and transnational work that challenges territorial and genre conventions in a kind of practice that can be related to what Diana Taylor (2007) denominates hemispheric performance. Highway is an artist and a cultural agent that participates in the exchange of knowledge between cultures and in the continuation of Cree/Ojibway storytelling. His openness to artists and critics from many different countries, as well as the experience of travelling abroad as a musician in his cabaret shows, underline the value of his plays as a means of cross-cultural dialogue which creates knowledge. In this article, I demonstrate that Highway’s shows in cabaret style employ transcultural phenomena and explore how his experiences in Brazil and his knowledge of Brazilian music have been integrated into his theatrical production. I propose a poetics of tricksterism as Highway’s strategy to engage with the world in a global perspective and at the same time reinforce Indigenous cultural and spiritual traditions
In the altitudes of elation ‘we look up and hold the folds of language inside us without any word for wind’1: at the start of the light we ask, what is Secession/Insecession?
(Universidad de Huelva, 2017) Robichaud, Geneviève
Bahai Cuisine and Other Delicacies: Canadian-Brazilian Cultural Encounters and the Invisible Neighbour
(Universidad de Huelva, 2017) Braz, Albert
Although activities like travel and translation are supposed to expand one’s cultural horizons, it is widely accepted that one is not always able to escape the imprint of one’s own society. Perhaps more critical, in the process of engaging discursively with other peoples, one runs the risk of revealing one’s lack of interest in them, as reflected in a limited knowledge of their culture and history. This essay attempts to demonstrate this through an examination of the cavalier treatment of the Portuguese language in two contemporary Canadian texts about Brazil, Brazilian Journal by P.K. Page and Projection: Encounters with My Runaway Mother by Priscila Uppal, along with the idiosyncratic attitude toward Canadian history in the nineteenth-century Brazilian work Poemas americanos I: Riel by Mathias Carvalho. The essay’s central objective is not to discourage writers from exposing themselves to other societies and chronicling their experiences. Rather, it aims to promote openness to difference through a willingness to engage with other languages and other ways of seeing and being. Indeed, the essay concludes by suggesting that writers develop strategies to remind them that they are dealing with cultures with which they are not intimately familiar, and thus inadvertently avoid injuring foreign sensibilities
Another piece of reassuring plastic: 8 notes on what the noigandres group taught me
(Universidad de Huelva, 2017) Beaulieu, Derek

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