(My sister Kathaleen’s plate. She is the fifth oldest in my family)
Mapping and memory presented by Fred Wah in Diamond Grill relates directly to one of my 3rd year Painting classes here at UBC. Our class visited the Richmond Art Gallery to view an exhibition of work by Canadian artist Landon Mackenzie. She is a painter interested in how maps are created: how historical, political and personal influences affect their outcome.
- Landon MacKenzie’s, Vancouver as the Centre of the World Commissioned by VANOC for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
- http://www.landonmackenzie.com/projects/project4.html
- Mackenzie relates map making to writing fiction. In an article by Alan Morantz in Canadian Geographic he writes:“Mackenzie approaches her painting in a way similar to how her friend, Canadian novelist Jane Urquhart, approaches her writing. Urquhart uses pieces of documented history and extrapolates a fantasy. Though maps do not have the same linear progression as a novel, they are still storytelling vehicles, so Mackenzie set out to create a different sort of historical fiction.”
MacKenzie paints Vancouver at the center of the world in her map and thus distorts the placement of other continents and cities of the world. She also overlaps many different maps to reveal how historical and political views operate the representation of the world.
http://www.landonmackenzie.com/reviews/shadowingmapmakers.htm
In the Diamond Grill, Fred Wah’s repetitive return to places and spaces reveals the Grill in a slow process like that of navigating along a route of a map. And, like most maps, our journeys often retraces and crosses-over sites repeatedly. Wah’s memory mapping of the Grill is nonlinear. Some places appear bigger and more commanding because of the descriptive detail given to them or because of the histories attached to them. MacKenzie also observes that some maps magnify their capital cities where other maps place no hierarchy upon any one place. When “mapping” the Grill in his novel, Wah use of repetition of certain spaces within the Grill also “capitalizes” them. The soda fountain and the swinging doors between the front of the café and the kitchen are two such spaces. These represent places of transitional power for Fred junior. The doors from the kitchen, the land of the oriental, take Fred junior into the front of the house, the land of the occidental. Like the hyphen of his Canadian-Chinese heritage, these doors allow or force Fred to identify as either Canadian or Chinese.
The soda fountain operates in a similar fashion. Here Fred junior’s Canadian self has an opportunity to experience a sense of power, overriding any stigma attached to being Chinese. All soda fountain orders must be given to Fred junior to fill. Here he is allowed an opportunity to affect business itself. He invents the “Grey Cup Special” and impresses his friends by serving them generous portions (41). Here Fred junior can play the role of proprietor rather than that of the soda jerk. He chooses to map the geography of this space, to “capitalize” it, and along with it, himself.
Works Cited: Wah, Fred. Diamond Grill. Edmonton, AB: NeWest Press., 2006
I like your emphasis on the subjective aspect of map-making, and in particular how Fred is able to use the narrative to create his own “map” of sorts. When thinking about the concept of maps, one thing that always comes to my mind is the notion of arbitrariness; the division of territory is not physical and it is done by those in a position of power. I am intrigued by your comment that Fred Wah “capitalizes” places such as the swinging door because I tend to think of maps as a marking of boundaries, yet Wah manages to make places of transition a line on a map so to speak. This makes me think that Wah is subverting the notion of map-making in the first place by manipulating the form of a map; can concretely defined lines represent a space of liminality? Do you think that the power Wah gains from “map-making” is a product of his position as map-maker, or a product of subverting the concept of a map itself and thus undermining the power of those who create more normative maps?
II think Wah does gains power from “map-making” and from subverting the recognizable concept of map makers in defining territories with borders. I think that the “swinging door” is Wah’s way of addressing both the idea that identity and territories are both fluid concepts. Identity has a fluidity based upon social context and territories have fluidity because what a map depicts as a border is rarely ever an actual physical border in reality. This implies that territories and identity both have lines that can be crossed or straddled. The soda fountain is Fred juniors command centre or “capital”. Here he can “govern” within the Chinese restaurant and choose to identify as white-Canadian in a public display of power and authority. It is his place, his “island in the blood” of the vein that is the restaurant (23).