Fred Wah’s Diamond Grill is a fascinating work of literature addressing the experiences of Wah’s family as Chinese Canadians around the 1950’s. It addresses questions of racism, identity, cultural and individual memory, and various other themes not uncommon in life narrative addressing a group of marginalized individuals within a society. Only Wah’s work is not quite life narrative. In fact, Diamond Grill has been classified under numerous names. Wah considers his piece a biofiction, “largely about hybridity” (Wah 178) in both content and form. He utilizes prose in both a more fictional and nonfictional manner, along with archival pieces, recipes, and poems in Diamond Grill. However, perhaps the most interesting aspect of his writing is the poetic language he uses throughout (even when recalling something more like a work of life narrative).
This post is in response to pages 60 and 139 of Diamond Grill, on which Wah gives entries that consist solely of footnotes. These pages are archival in their nature, introducing outside text into Wah’s work. However, even here, in another’s work, Wah’s poetic devices are at play. These two pages not only use the poetic device of space, but do so in a manner that highlights the presence of an archival silence. An “archival silence” can refer to any voice(s) that is altered or excluded from being preserved in an archive (Carter 216). Archival silences can have enormous impacts on “the state of societal memory” (219) and thus can lead to questions of cultural and personal identity, pages 60 and 139 reflect these questions. Page 60 describes the limiting of Chinese immigration into the United States as being directly related to the Chinese not taking kindly to poker, and in doing so proposes a re-imagination of a Chinese population that had a different view on the matter. The Chinese-American population was marginalized and its voice suppressed. The view on poker that this excerpt suggests the Chinese hold conflicting with the information Wah provides regarding his family’s gambling history suggests that disparities exist between the various voices addressing Chinese culture. The last two sentences on page 139 reads “We would rather be anywhere, as long as we are somewhere. We would rather be anyone, as long as we are someone.”. These sentences speak to the need to assert identity and voice; they are what allows for this passage to be a call for voice.
As Carter argues, “the naming of silence subverts it” (222) and these sentences name the silence. Then, with the knowledge of a gap and a fear of that gap, the use of poetic space can be understood as meaningful. In poetry, space can be utilized as “an integral part of the meaning, creating clearly distinguishable gaps and interruptions” (poetry beyond). The space left on either page leaves room for questions, but specifically within the context of archives it creates almost visualized silences. The title portions of either page create apprehension for answers, but this apprehension is not alleviated with answers, simply space. Silence.
Exploring the intentions of an author is dangerous for a scholar, and with another author this format could be excused as simply that. However, Wah is a poet, and whilst it isn’t our place to assume, it is ours to consider that he deliberately used the methods he is already familiar with in crafting Diamond Grill. The intersections within this biofiction between poetry and archival work is doubtless far more extensive than simply these two pages, and better understanding one may certainly provide further insight into the other.
Works Cited
Carter, Rodney G. S. “Of Things Said and Unsaid: Power, Archival Silences, and Power in Silence.” Archivaria, no. 61, 2006, pp. 215-233. Archivaria, http://archivaria.ca/index.php/archivaria/article/view/12541/13687. Accessed 25 Feb. 2017.
Goellnicht, Donald. “Fred Wah.” The Canadian Encyclopedia, www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/fred-wah/. Accessed 12 Mar. 2017.
“Space – Poetry Beyond Text.” Poetry Beyond Text, www.poetrybeyondtext.org/space.html. Accessed 12 Mar. 2017.
Wah, Fred. Diamond Grill: 10th Anniversary. Edmonton, NeWest Press, 2008.