Dionne Brand captivatingly reveals the conflicted nature of hyphenated identities in our multicultural society through a beautiful, poetic prose. Brand’s way of portraying her characters’ individualities, and eccentricities, whilst also revealing their unattractive characteristics such as frustration, anger and confusion is an effective way of illustrating a relatable reality. Literary discourses that compare extreme individuals, one almost perfectly good and the other pure evil, is ineffective in capturing realistic characters. By her conflicted characters, Brand is able to paint a bigger picture where the reader is left to analyze the character’s personalities, the various influences, and burdens that impacted the characters to have left them so angry, or frustrated. Her style of characterization serves as a tool of understanding these characters compassionately, and relating to them.

Brand’s central theme is identity constructions in a globalizing society. She attempts to demonstrate what its like to live in the hyphen, and how it affects people’s personalities. She captures the significance of labeling and how people choose to identify with particular labels, and the ways in which people construct themselves around these labels. Tuyen’s embarrassment and shame directed towards her parents carries an underlying implication of identity construction. She isn’t directly ashamed of her roots, but the various connotations and labels her roots carry. Shame correlated to her identity results in generational division, and loss of culture. Her internalized shame comes from external influences. Traumatized by exclusion, and labeling, she drives herself from individuality, and prefers to stand with the crowd, no matter what the situation is. During the World Cup, she passes by Korea Town, and finds herself supporting the Korean team, and says that she is Korean for a day. This shows how she is easily absorbed by mob mentality, and this characteristic of hers is embedded in her sensitivity to being labeled and feeling excluded. Brand instrumentally, and subtly portrays Tuyen’s conflicted identity through her daily preferences. Though her father owns a Vietnamese restaurant, Tuyen prefers western food, especially milk and potatoes. Someone in class mentioned that her preference for these white colored foods could be interpreted as her way of identifying with the dominant white culture, even though her body physically rejects milk. Another example would be of how she is angered by the fact that her family doesn’t cook at home and have proper dinners. She longs to have the conventional family ritual of dining, and interprets that there is something wrong with her family because they don’t follow this ritual. Through her longing of the dining ritual, she also longs for communication with her parents. She is frustrated by her parents’ silence, and lack of communication. Her mother is insomniac, and has an excessive behavior of obsession with reserving documents related to their identities. Instead of feeling compassionate towards her mother, and understanding that her mother’s obsession with documents is probably an outcome of a traumatizing event, she is frustrated and angered by various behaviors her parents have.

Dionne Brand offers us a rather different approach in voicing the immigrants. However extreme, and subjective, I think that she accurately portrays what its like to live in the hyphen. Though I can’t directly relate to immigrant life, and being traumatized by labeling, I can easily relate to a hyphenated identity. When people ask me where I am from, though I answer with no hesitation that I am from Mongolia, I think the label “Mongolian” doesn’t fully represent my identity. Growing up in an international school my whole life, I was often excluded from the Mongolian identity because of my strong western influences. I can’t even confidently claim Mongolian as my mother language because I’m not as fluent at it as a typical Mongolian, but I can’t claim English as my mother language either. In addition, I was heavily influenced by Russian culture and language whilst growing up, and it is embedded in my identity. I prefer to label myself as a global citizen, however the label also undermines my individuality. In the sense that I can’t fully identify to any particular label, and that I am a hyphenated identity, I can easily relate to Brand’s characters. The collision between generations is also something I think anyone can relate to. My parents grew up in a communist society, in addition to being only 2 generations away from our indigenous/nomadic influences. Though they successfully adapted to democracy and its ideologies, their characters are still heavily entrenched in conservative, and culturally subjective perceptions. Due to this, I sometimes struggle to understand my parents, and vice versa. However, because I understand their personalities well, where they are coming from, what their intentions are, and what they signify and mean, we come to a mutual understanding eventually. As regard to roots, and inheritance, I am proud of my background, because I know its what makes me different. However it’s easy for me to accept my individuality and express it because I wasn’t excluded or labeled for it whilst growing up, whereas Brand’s characters are very sensitive to this.

In history class, we recently viewed an Australian movie that astonishingly captures a personal tale of colonisation. Rabbit-Proof Fence remarkably captures the devastating effects of colonialism, revealing an elaborate insight of an individual’s understandings of things happening around them, and instinctively building defence mechanisms and ways of dealing with oppression. The main character, Molly, is an innocent child with powerful agency who, striving for freedom of oppression, was able to achieve her goal through restless resistance. Her character effectively portrays the importance of resistance, illuminating the power agency. Molly’s character significantly sparks the watcher’s own sense of agency, and resistance.

With that being said, this movie is an excellent work of art that reminds us of the importance of arts in cultivating the collective imagination. It is through arts that people “re-charge” their own sense of agency, and power, simultaneously fostering their capacity of imagination, and power of understanding others- compassion. Though people have trouble understanding each other because they are captured by their differences, and not similarities, it is through imagination that we are able to see through these differences. Ultimately, coming to realization that these differences are simply socially constructed ideas, and in the end all humans are more alike than different. What is not available in the collective imagination cannot suddenly realize itself, and the arts is what triggers the incentive to imagine what could be. Artists, in all forms- writers, visual artists, musicians- stimulates, excites and appeals something collective in all of us. It is the ultimate catalyst, and source of nurturing the collective imagination.

This made me think of the question of genocide that we have been also discussing in anthropology and history. Is it genocide if it happened unintentionally? However unintentionally carried out, the devastating consequences it entailed was inevitable, and in the end what matters is the outcome. Focusing on intention only misdirects us from what actually matters, and serves the sides that need to take the blame. Psychological analysis of denial, and defence mechanisms can be clearly demonstrated here. The colonisers desperately seek to justify themselves, and defend themselves in every way possible because they are still in denial. It is not that simple for acceptance to override denial with the heavy burden of guilt, especially when the colonisers is a collective group. What we must focus on is reconciliation, rather than quarrelling in the ultimately unimportant question of genocide. Because in the end, focusing on the question of genocide will negatively serve the collective state of denial. However, scholarly questioning of course in the end serves good, because raising such questions will help the collective mentality to come to understanding each side of story, and realize that it is simply an unfortunate series of events, rather than seeking someone to blame. In conclusion, it is essential to keep in mind not to lose focus on what actually matters, which is the effect rather than cause, whilst attempting to understand the natures of the causes.