Character Analysis: 'What We All Long For' by Dionne Brand

Everyone dreams of living a happy and fulfilling life. Sometimes, we need a fresh start. In “Mammita’s Garden Cove,” Max daydreamed about a life where he could start over in Canada. He thought hard about his life in this new place. However, the situation didn’t unfold like he wanted. Cyril Dabydeen uses literary techniques such as diction, imagery, and irony to express Max’s intricate attitude towards his new home in Canada, and his old home on the island.

This definition highlights the two dominant markers of the form: the use of fantasy and the counter-hegemonic disruption of cultural and social realities. Fantasy can imagine justice into the reality of an unjust world, which is why it has been so useful in postcolonial contexts and has interesting possibilities for metropolitan life. Yamashita’s novel fits squarely in this tradition, and I suggest she leverages the form to imaginatively transform Los Angeles from a plethora of racially, socially and economically distinct and, at times, antagonistic neighborhoods connected yet separated by freeways and bound within the borders of the U.S., to an embattled yet impossibly and transnationally interconnected utopian urbanity located literally on the freeway. Conventions of causality and materiality are regularly violated as the city physically and socially changes shape, congregating and collapsing distinct worlds, nations and cultures into one metropolis. Under the spell of magical realism, Yamashita’s Los Angeles becomes a

One’s commitment of immigrating to a new country for a better life indicates that oneself is ready to risk the life given to them by facing many hardships along the way. In the novel Enrique’s Journey by Sonia Nazario, Enrique does exactly that, risking his own life at the age of seventeen in order to reunite with his mother who left him when he was five in order to obtain a better job in the US and give Enrique and his older sister everything she thought they deserved. Nazario utilizes an emotional appeal and metaphors to inform readers of the arduous situations migrants experience on their long and tiring journey in search of a family member and a better future.

A story is most powerful when it inspires the reader to believe that reading the story is “necessary”. In our textbook, there are three stories that hold true to this idea and follow the “Between Worlds” theme. These stories are, “A Cab Drivers Daughter” by Waheeda Samady, “Three Ways of Meeting Oppression” by Martin Luther King Jr., and “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” by Joyce Carol Oates. In “A Cab Drivers Daughter” a Pediatrician examines her life and the life of her father; she notes all the stereotypes and negativity that surrounds an immigrant driving a cab. This story shines light on the generation gap and cultural beliefs. Secondly, “Three Ways of Meeting Oppression” is the explanation behind the ideology of the

David Berreby who is known as the author of “It Takes a Tribe,” was born in France in 1958. He was raised by an American mother and a Jewish father. Berreby talks about the lifestyle of being a college student in gaining a respectable position in the hierarchy of a college tradition within the club membership. David Berrebys’ analysis of ‘us’ v’s ‘them’ brings an impact to all the students because they feel like they need to find or join a group in which they belong to. As for David Brooks, the author of “Our Sprawling Supersize Utopia” who was born in Toronto, Ontario. Brooks was born and raised by his American citizen father in Canada. He made a claim on how suburbs were sprawling and the lifestyles in this society are becoming complex for those people who desire to expand their way of adapting and living in the different environment. Both authors have the same similarities for advancing in a new way of living and as a group, people should be addressed in fitting in a particular social society.

In the story “Four Stations in His Circle”, Austin Clarke reveals the negative influences that immigration can have on people through characterization of the main character, symbols such as the house that Jefferson dreams to buy and the time and place where the story takes place. The author demonstrates how immigration can transform someone to the point that they abandon their old culture, family and friends and remain only with their loneliness and selfishness.

In the novel Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson, the author uses the characters internal and external conflicts to show that everybody has chains both physically and mentally.

Elijah Anderson published a novel called “The Cosmopolitan Canopy” where he looks at the “race and civility of everyday life”, as he puts it. He throughout the novel defines the “cosmopolitan canopy” as accepting of people from all backgrounds. In other words, the canopy is composed of a diverse population, lots of people and public spaces. Most importantly it has the spirit of positivity and civility. The best example of this would be Reading Terminal market in Philadelphia. Anderson believes that it epitomizes the idea because of how interactive people of different races, social and economic classes are getting along (10). The novel looks critically at public space in Philadelphia, who is allowed in them and how people interact within them.

Throughout the text “Solitary Stroller and the City,” author Rebecca Solnit explores the complex relationships between the walking individual and living in the city. The title brings together three central ideas; walking, the city, and solitariness as an individual.. These three central ideas are tied together and used to reveal deeper meanings and relationships within the text. When analyzing Solnit’s work, the reader is left to identify a complex relationship between the central ideas and how the geography of a city influences all the three of the central ideas. Solnit makes claims throughout the text that are strongly suggestive of a relationship between the ability to walk and its derivability based on the “when” and “where” concepts. The geography and or location can be explored through the comparison of rural walking versus urban walking, the comparison between the cities of London and New York, and the solitariness associated with the geography and structure in one city versus another. Spanning the entire text is the idea that the city influences the walker and their individualism among the crowd, or their perception of solitude. Solnit compares London walkers and New York walkers, exploring how their different geographical locations define their city as a whole as well as the individual. Geography plays a crucial role in one 's idea of solitude and individualism.

The sense of displacement both physically, and psychologically, indicates that the unnamed narrator fails to settle his life in Montreal. The physical geographical isolation in Montreal distinguished the unnamed narrator from those whom are seemed as true ‘Canadians’. Contrast to the small, dirty, freezing apartment he lives, the extravagantly built houses which he breaks into strengthens the unreachable social gap between the unnamed narrator and Quebecois citizens. Furthermore, the unnamed narrator’s fixation on the “underground”, as Domenic A. Beneventi asserts, is a “symbolic” spatial embodiment of “the marginalized” (280). The unnamed narrator often transforms into a cockroach and crawls into the underground, which represents his physical

In Laurence Ralph’s Renegade Dreams, the citizens in Eastwood are susceptible to isolation due the physical injuries and social injuries. My main argument is, the physical injuries and social injuries have impacted their daily lives and have made some residents isolated from others around them. The theme of isolation plays a role in throughout the book as the residents use isolation to motivate themselves and pursue their dreams. This dream is curated from different residents such as Justin Cone, Blizzard, and the gangs (Divine Knights). In the essay, the topics covered are the stories of the characters and the context of isolation in motivating residents to achieve their dreams. This idea can be explained through the ethnographic data, in text citations, and the stories of the characters.

The story of the immigrant reaches across all wakes of life. The young and old from distances as close as the neighboring city to as far as across the globe, seeking better opportunity for themselves or their family, even at the expense of separation from the ones they love and the familiarity of their home country. Shaun Tan illustrates such a journey of displacement in his graphic novel The Arrival, a quintet of immigrant stories that exposes the countless reasons to establish a new life by following a foreigner who leaves his wife and child in search for a safer and permanent home. By train and boat, he travels to a metropolis, where upon arrival, he is examined and given a destination. Here, he battles feelings of isolation that come with cultural displacement, a lack of dialogical skills, and finding his place among the expanding immigrant community.

I like the way the author Sherrilyn Kenyon wrote this book. With every page, I feel like I’m in the story more and more. The characters also helped bring this story to life by having emotions that anyone can relate to. Besides the characters, another thing I liked was the attention grabbing action. In all, I liked the well written story, the easily related emotions, and the intense action packed parts in Invincible.

In William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” the story is revolved around the character Emily Grierson. The story is told by the townspeople where Emily lives. These people are attending her funeral and pitching in memories and tales they remember from Emily’s life. It is through the collective voices and opinions of the crowd that the reader is able to interpret Emily’s struggles. With Emily Grierson’s choices the reader can tell that she is a dependant woman, with psychotic tendencies, and does not take the thought of change and rejection lightly.

Throughout the world of suburbia, there seems to be a persistence of communities who attempt to create a perfect, enclosed world for the whole of the community to live in. By providing for everything that the inhabitants would ever want, suburbia is able to close itself off from those around it that it deems unworthy of belonging. While this exclusivity helps to foster the sense of community, it can also bring with it isolation from the outside, and also from within, and have disastrous results. Throughout the semester, there have been a number of works that have dealt the issue of isolation, but the greatest representation of a work whose physical qualities in its representation of suburbia help to