Kiss of the Fur Queen is a novel by Tomson Highway, and the story parallels with the author’s own life; his experience in relocation in residential school system. This novel explores residential schools as part of a large policy of assimilation and cultural genocide. Tomson Highway is a Cree writer, and his representation in the story illuminates the ruptures and the unexpected common ground between postcolonial and Indigenous nationalist approaches to reconciliation. Here, this reconciliation acts as ‘healing’ therapy; as the story (issues about residential schooling) is told to the public, it functions as some sort of therapy to talk out of reasonable anger.

Many Indigenous-authored texts explore displacement as primary to the healing of cultural affiliation for their protagonists. They emphasize reservation over urban experiences, and the importance of returning to these locations after time; the notion of ‘coming home’ or ‘coming back home’ is what indicates the goodness. Thus, readers will conclude that Native identity demands living in Indigenous community (reserved area) through rejecting of urbanization. However, Highway’s narrative places importance of urban experiences to recent Indigenous story; he portrays more middle-class, urban, and even artistic characters. Kiss of the Fur Queen suggests an identity that is not Aboriginal, but is grounded on the cityscape. It is a center for Indigenous creativity. Unlike other Indigenous-authored narratives, he does not maintain the same storyline with ‘reservation’ or ‘Indigenous community’, but instead he creates an urban-centered sense for Native place. Through this, the notion of ‘coming home’ is no more a primary good, but now, locating the Aboriginal within the city has become a more ideal community setting.

Overall, readers are more knowledgeable about the reality of contemporary Indigenous peoples’ experiences and Canadian relocation policies and other historic important events like Indian Act.

A word “diaspora” denotes the forced or voluntary displacement of groups of people from their homeland and their dispersal across the world. The term has become so popular and important in the 1990s as feminists paid particular attention to how gender shapes both the material experience of migration and the ways in which diaspora is conceived and represented in gendered terms.

The author of Out on Main Street Shani Mootoo was born in Ireland and raised in Trinidad, and now resides in Canada. In her novel, Mootoo represents diaspora generated by different factors (ex. historical trauma, colonialism, globalization). Her work explores the characteristics of diaspora- home and banishment, loss and longing, and so on. But the work still remains in a woman-centered perspective that privileges female experience. Thus, these female subjects have power to subvert masculinist conceptions of diaspora and ideologies of home and nation.

Overall, Out on Main Street addresses the question of how women have re-shaped prevailing conceptions of diaspora, as well as how diaspora has shaped contemporary women’s writing. It informs us the ways in which dislocated ones convey the feelings of alienation that accompany the status of alien, stranger or foreigner. In the end, Mootoo’s writings help us to re-consider and question the problematic notion of “Mantra for Migrants”.

The Kappa Child is about Japanese Canadian sisters who struggle to escape the bonds of a family and land. The father decides to migrate from the green fields and bountiful rain of British Columbia to Alberta, not knowing they would encounter shortage of water. There, despite the sweltering prairie heat and dearth of water, the father is determined to grow rice. There is lack of love in the family as well, but the protagonist discovers the Kappa Child, a mythical creature, and this creature enables even the drought stricken to feel the rain of forgiveness and love.

As noted in the lecture, the readers truly learn to appreciate the dialogues between different communities (Indigenous, Immigrant, and settlers) through contemporary writings (especially from those written by outside immigrants), like that of The Kappa Child. The narrative of the book helps us to shape us as whom we are now, and to acknowledge where we belong to (e.g., community, nation). It is important that we respect and recognize the diversity of groups in our community (especially when we are living in one of the most “multi-cultural” country, Canada). Through a novel like The Kappa Child, we are being told and informed about history working as a social construction; we as audiences build history as a story. As history is malleable and has potential to change, contemporary writings truly shape our understanding of history of the land and its settlers.

Written by Canadian author Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale is a dystopian novel. It presents a virtual republic called Gilead, which is built and completed by Christian fundamentals. In The Handmaid’s Tale, Gilead is a dystopian space where people are imprisoned and oppressed in the name of religion. Here, women’s bodies are strictly governed and regulated by the state. The author provides anti-utopian situations to an extreme against humanism and sexism, which in the end helped me to re-think about inequalities between the sexes in my own culture. The work’s feminist concerns make it a great piece to empower the public to gain knowledge about the political issues. The time when this novel was published, the feminism was not popular as much as today. In the 1980s, a term ‘feminist’ was even synonymous with ‘man-hater’ (Garcia, 04). Knowing this, we cannot come to a conclusion that The Handmaid’s Tale made feminism popular, but still remarkably brought the topic of inequality in feminism to the public.  This exposure of feminist consciousness became more popular together with the book’s growth in recognition.

In the article “Popular culture and Reproductive Politics”, Latimer claims that the novel’s use of satire allows for an examination of reproductive politics, which later works as a symptomatic of how the anti-abortion politics have become (Latimer, 213). The Handmaid’s Tale encourages readers to understand what it really means to be a woman or a man, and to challenge the already-existing cultural norms and embodied ideas. With the rise of public’s consciousness on reproductive politics through this novel, a film like Juno was able to offer similar issues in a more comfortable manner. In the end, it is within bounds to say that The Handmaid’s Tale brought it up to a point to the ‘success of the anti-abortion movement’, as the public no longer understands feminism as a simple backlash.

 

References

Jennifer R., Garcia. “Popularizing feminist politics: Margaret Atwood’s “the handmaid’s tale”, feminism, and popular culture.” ( 2003) ETD Collection for University of Texas, El Paso. 

Latimer, Heather. “Popular culture and Reproductive Politics: Juno, Knocked Up and the Enduring Legacy of The Handmaid’s Tale.” Feminist Theory 10 (2009): 211-226. 

After watching the movie Juno, I was surprised by the fact that 16-year-old Juno could make her own decisions on whether to give birth to her baby or not. The movie surpassed and subverted the clichéd plot; the main character Juno seriously considers about termination. Despite the fact that Hollywood movies are assumed to be a bastion of political liberalism, movie characters always either keep the baby or conveniently miscarry it. However, in Juno, a teenager girl gets to decide against abortion. The film suggests and portrays the image of a wild and free femininity, while emphasizing frailty in male. It suggests feminine power of giving birth. Throughout repetitive portrayals in films and other medias, the popular culture is highly saturated with images of pregnancy and even with teen pregnancy.

The author of “Experiencing Abortion: A Weaving of Women’s Words” Eve Kushner stressed that, “Juno knows how hard it is to raise a baby, and understands that these things are above her maturity level. In other films, having a baby is seen as a cure-all for immaturity.” She thinks that Juno will help Hollywood start to grow up; this movie differs from other pregnancy films as it successfully portrays a journey through the turbulence of adult-size decision making. There is no “rights to life” portrayed in the film. Juno makes her own choices without putting any restrictions, and does not even try to reside in a normative form of life.

Interestingly, films do play a significant role in creating a stereotypical image. It has potential to reject and break the conventional belief or already-embedded ideas, and to help us reconsider and to cultivate new ways of thinking. In the end, a film like Juno idealizes a new image of a ‘teenage mom’, and allows the public to truly appreciate them.

 

 

 

References

Haines, M., Ruby, J., McCaslin, D., Mantilla, K., & Rodgers, M. (2007). JUNO: Feminist or not? Off our Backs, 37(4), 70-73.

Yabroff, J. (2007, Dec 10, 2007). A special delivery. Newsweek, 150, 98.