Reseña de: DAVIS, ROCÍO G., and
ROSALÍA BAENA, eds. Tricks with a Glass Writing
Ethnicity in Canada. Amsterdam-Atlanta, GA:
Rodopi 2000. 301 pp

González Acosta, Marta

Oliva Cruz, Juan Ignacio

Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de La Laguna

MARTA GONZÁLEZ & JUAN IGNACIO OLIVA / NOTA DE LECTURA272CANADA, IDENTITY AND ETHNICITYAT A CROSSROADS. DAVIS, ROCÍO G., andROSALÍA BAENA, eds. Tricks with a Glass WritingEthnicity in Canada. Amsterdam-Atlanta, GA:Rodopi 2000. 301 pp.The word ‘mosaic’ seems particularly aptto define the way in which different ethnicgroups coexist in the Canadian literary land-scape. The multifaceted reality of the countryand its inhabitants is continuously brought tothe front through the complex intermingling ofdifferent voices —or, rather, one could almostsay, of different accents, who search for an iden-tity in an ever-hyphenated space. Whether hy-phenated and hybrid existences constitute anunescapable source of anxiety or imply a possi-bility for individual realization -and for an even-tual construction of a place to which identitymay grasp- is good food for thought for the in-vestigator researching in the field of ethnicity inCanada. This aptly-entitled piece of criticismwill certainly help the researcher to look for ananswer to such enquiries.After the editors’ introduction, the bookopens beautifully with a half-essay, half-fictionalaccount by the Canadian writer of Ukrainiandescent Janice Kulyk Keefer. A hybrid text it-self, this piece deals with ideas of dislocation,nostalgia and identity from a privileged pointof view: that of the ‘hyphenated’ writer herself.The first part of the text offers us a first-handaccount of the experience of otherness and dis-location through family facts and criticalthought meeting artistic memoir. To assert theambivalence of rootlessness is one of Keefer’saims, to attempt to grasp a past recurring, whennecessary, to that commonplace of ethnic writ-ing, the imaginary homeland. The inclusion ofKeefer’s own artistic production enriches thebook at large, by succeeding in uniting both thememoir and the critical understanding of thatmemoir. And it is partly on a genre whoseboundaries often blur with those of the memoirthat another of the book’s highlights stands. Weare referring to Rocío G. Davis’ comprehensiveessay on the short-story cycle, a genre deeplylinked to postcolonial writing and, as she shows,to ethnic writing in Canada. Davis’ analysisdeals in particular with Rohinton Mistry’s Talesfrom Firozsha Baag, but provides an overviewof the genre with special interest to its intrinsicrelation to the portrayal of (im)migrant identi-ties in Canada. The elusive nature of the genre,both a succession of fragments and a unity as awhole serves, as Davis points out, particularlywell to ethnic aims at representation: “The eth-nic short-story cycle may be considered the for-mal materialization of the trope of doublenessas the between-worlds condition is presented viaa form that itself oscillates between two gen-res.” (Davis 75)Rosalía Baena’s rendering of Nino Ricci’sLives of the Saints is another key reading in thebook. Interestingly, the author draws attentionto Ricci’s handling of morality in the text, andthe relation between the native Italian shore andCanada as a destination partly on this light. Thesymbolic reach of Ricci’s novel is craftly decodedby Baena, whose clear conclusions shed light onthe understanding of this text in particular, whilethey illuminate as well more general aspects ofthe discussion in which the book is set.As the editors explain in the introduction,the book attempts to offer a critical understand-ing of particular texts rather than focusing onmore general concepts. However, our impressionis that both things are achieved, something whichis always to be appreciated. Other authors dis-cussed include Michael Ondaatje (Aitor Ibarrola-Armendariz), Neil Bissoondath (Kathleen Firth),Joy Kogawa (Eva Darias Beautell) and Sky Lee(Mary Condé and Eva Darias Beautell), amongothers. Parejo Vadillo’s article “Native Womenand Resistance Literature” is noteworthy as well.The book ends beautifully by creating, in somesense, a circular structure with Keefer’s openingessay, with two interviews to Wayson Choy andLinda Hutcheon. One could almost say, thatTricks with a Glass constitutes an article-cycle. Aremarkable achievement.MARTA GONZÁLEZ & JUAN IGNACIO OLIVA20 (Reseña Marta González y otro).pmd 05/03/2013, 11:18272

Canada, Identity and Ethnicity at a Crossroads

https://riull.ull.es/xmlui/bitstream/915/29679/1/RCEI_45_2002_20.pdf

Canada, Identity and Ethnicity at a Crossroads

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Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de La Laguna