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MINORITY LANGUAGES AS ESISTAXCE IN MARCO MICONE'S -+DOCURATA,
BEïTY QUAN'S MOïEER TONGLE,AND GUELERMO VERDECCHIA'S
FRONTEMSAMERlCNRT (mCAVBORDERT)
A Thesis
Presented to
The FacuIty of Graduate Studies
of
The University of GueIp h
in partial fulfillment of requirements
for the degree of
Master of Arts
Augusr, 1999 National Library Biblhthèque nationale 1+1 ,canada du Canada Acquisitions and Acquisitions et Bibliographie SeMces services bibliographiques 395 Wellington Street 395. rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A ûN4 O(tawaON KIAW Canada Canada
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The author retains ownership of the L'auteur conserve la propriété du copyright in this thesis. Neither the droit d'auteur qui protège cette thèse- thesis nor substantial extracts fkom it Ni la thèse ni des extraits substantiels may be printed or otherwise de celle-ci ne doivent être imprimés reproduced without the author's ou autrement reproduits sans son permission. autorisation, MINORïïY LANGUAGES AS RESISTANCE IN MARCO MICONE'S ADDOLORATA, BElTY QUAN'S MOTNER TONGUE AND GUXLLJBMO VERDECCHIA'S FRONTERAS AhEiWCANAS (AMERTCAN BORDERS)
Julie Byczynski Advisor: University of Guelph, 1999 Professor Ric Knowles
This thesis is an investigation of the use of uatranslated minority languages (that is, the presence of "foreign" words or phrases in the dialogue of plays written in Canada's
'official languages") as resistance to dominant discourses in three Canadian plays emerging £tom immigrant or ethnic cultures. Marco Micone's AdZolarata (in its original
French and in its English translation), Betty Quan's Mother Tongue, and Guillermo
VerdecchiarsFronteras Americanm represent varying degrees and types of resistance.
The thesis draws on pst-colonial theorists and on such writers as Mikhail Bakhtin,
Michel de Certeau, Baz Kershaw, and Homi Bhabha to explore the often ambivalent linguistic power relationships among French, English, Italian, Cantonese, Amencan Sign
Language, and Spanish Ianguages and cultures in English Canada and Quebec. Acknowledgements
1 would like to thank my fadyand niends for their continuing encouragement- especiaily Angus. 1wodd also iÏke to acknowledge the support of my feiiow graduate students and so many of the facuity and staff at the University of Guelph, particularly
François Paré and Doma Palmateer Pennee. 1thank Ric Knowles for the the and thought that he has invested in me and in this thesis. My appreciation also goes to Betty
Qum for granting permission to quote fkom ber correspondence with me.
Lastiy, this thesis is dedicated to my aunt, Pat Bethune, who continues to inspire me with her infectious laugh, her endless strength, and her cornmitment to her career, family, and many friends- Tabie of Contents
Introduction 1
Chapter One: Marco Micone's AddoIorata 23
Chapter Two: Betty Quan's Mother Tongue 44
Chapter Three: Guillermo Verdecchia's Fronteras Americmurs 64
Conclusion 83
Works Cited 92 Marco Micone's Addolorata, Betty Quan's Mother Tongue, and Guillermo
Verdecchia's Fronteras Americunas (Amen'can Borders) share common ground in their portrayal of immigrant expenences, albeit contrasting ones. The plays' Nerences in subject matter, dramatic style, and writing technique do not preclude the prevaiIing tendency of the plays' use of minonty languagesLto function in ways that resist the hegemony of dominant languages and therefore destabilize the dominant cultures for which they speak. Although it might be tempting to cdthe technique of unstrans1ated2 minority language in the theatre a sure sign of resistance against, at the very Ieast, the dominant iinguistic culture surroundhg the minority one, the iines between "us" and
"them" ("ethnie" and "non-ethnic"), as the foilowing analysis of these plays wdl explore, are not as clear as such an assumption suggests. Indeed, this thesis will investigate the ways in which the practices of dominance and resistance to that dominance through the use of minority languages are ambivalent and fragmented in Addolorata, Mother Tongue, and Fronteras Americanas.
These three plays tell storïes of an intensely intimate nature: Addolorata, the story
1 By "minority" languages 1refer to Ianguages other than the dominant one of the given locale of the first production, Since Micone's Addotorara was first performed in a French speaking environment, the rninority ianguages in this play are English, Italian, and Spanish, but it is also important to keep in mind that English plays a larger role in Quebec; it is, in fact, the language of the cultures against whkh Québécois nationalism is aligneci, On the other hand, Verdecchia's Fronteras Americanas was first performed in English speaking Toronto, so the minority languages in this play are Spanish and French- In Quan's Mother Tongue,the rninority Ianguages are American Sign Language and Cantonese.
'1 use the term "untranslated" with caution here because to suggest that a given piece of dialogue is untranslated is to assume that a translation is required; i.e. that a spectatorfreader is not familiar with the language in question. For the sake of clarity, 1will use the word 'iintranslated" to refer to dialogue that is scrïpted as a minority language, as defined in note 1. of a failed marriage; Mother Tungue, the story of a family confiïct; and Fronteras
Americunas, the story of an individuai's stniggie for identity- It is through this glimpse
into the pnvate that these plays present political messages that concem the socio-
economic status of hm@ants, the loss of cultural heritage, and the fight against ethnic
stereotypes and racism. Aithough Micone, Qum, and Verdecchia bring spectators and
readers3 into the very private world of their characters, their plays can be read as political, and their use of minority Ianguages cmbe read as resistant to what Baz Kershaw casthe
"status quo" or ccmutuaiiyreinforcing" dominant ideologies as 1WU discuss in detail in the following chapters (20).
1 have chosen Addolurata, Mother Tungue, and Fronteras Amencanas because they openly deal with issues of Canadian immigrant experience and use untranslated so- called "foreign" or "other" languages. 1have decided not to include in my study a play by a First Nations playwright such as Tornson Highway for one main reason. Aithough
Highway uses native languages in a simiiar fasbion to Micone, Quan, or Verdecchia, his plays do not reflect the experience of new Canadians, people who have corne to Canada from someplace else. 1feel that by limiting the scope of my thesis to plays that involve immigrant experiences, the cultural specificities, although still quite variable between
Italo-Queôécois, Chinese Canadian, and Argenthian Canadian communities, are more manageable in the course of this project
The plays that 1 have selected were chosen for the obvious reason that they all represent immigrant experience and use untranslated minority languages, but also for
1wi11 mostly explore plays as performances, but consideration will be made of the plays as published te- when such consideration is usefil. several other reasons. First, they were produced within a short tirne span (1982-1995):
and they therefore are representaeive of a paaicular thehe. Second, the settings of
these piays represent contrasting regions within Canada and the three most common
destinations of immigrants (Montreai, Vancouver, and Toronto). Lastly, each of the plays demonstrates the at once different and similar ways in which theorking power and resistance is inherentiy problematic.
The cultural specificity of each of these piays varies considerably, and corresponds to the perspective of the playwrights themseives. Marco Micone, who immigrated to Canada fiom Italy as a child, writes from wiihin the Italo-Queoécois community in Montreai. His position as a minority writer ciiffers significantly fiom other
Italian Canadian (or other so-cailed "ethnie") writers because as a Quelbécois, he is already a part of a French Canadian cultural and linguistic minority- Betty Quan is fiom a younger generation and was educated at the University of British Columbia, Qum, as a
Chinese Canadian fÏom Western Canada and as a woman, represents another perspective on immigrant play Wfiting. GuiUermo Verdecchia was bom in Argentina and raised in
Waterloo, Ontario. His cnticaIiy successful plays corne out of the Toronto theatre scene, and more recently, out of Vancouver.
As wZ be discussed later, many critics, including pst-colonial critics Ashcroft,
Griffiths, and Tiffen, assert that the use of untranslated languages is a way to inscribe difference (53). 1maintain that the use of minority languages in Addoloratu, Mother
Tongue, and Fronteras Americanas at times constitutes what de Certeau calls "tactics of consurnption, the ingenious ways in which the 'weak' make use of the 'strong'" (xvii).
------4 Addolarata was first produced in 1982; Mother Tongue was workshopped in 1994, but premiered in
3 To put it another way, Micone, Qian, and Verdecchia do not came out new space as a site
of resistance with their plays; however, they and their characters move within an existing
space, negotiating for themseIves, and for others, room to ma~loeuvre.In Verdecchia's
te-, they try to build their home on the border, within ambivalent space, but their
ultirnate success is not guaranteed-
It is important to note that minority ianguages are used in many different ways in each play, and consequently, the effectiveness of resistance is aEected by these variations.
For example, if the use of untranslated ianguages in dialogue in the theatre is a way to
inscribe difference and is a sign of a resistance to a dominant culture, what is to be said of providuig translations? Wiihin a particular play, 'foreign" words or phrases are
sometimes translated into the dominant language either directly or indirectly, and quite often in both ways. In Fronteras Arnericanas, Verdecchia provides some English translations for dialogue spoken in Spanish, although the majority of the Spanish in the play remains a mystery for non-Spanîsh speaking spectators5. For example, Wideload is quite explicit in his translation of both cajones (crates) and cojones (testicles) (46).
Furthermore, Verdecchia provides the audience with a slide projection of the English text of his quotation of Octavio Paz in Spanish (74). Neither the character Wideload nor the character Verdecchia is consistent in his use of untranslated language, but what is and is not translated is always significant. The non-Spanish speaking spectator is at the mercy
February, 1995; and Fronrerrrs Americanas was fïrst produced in January, 1993. My label of 'non-Spanish speakhg" is problematic because of the enormous potentiai for (mis) interpretation. Proficiency in any language varies considerably among individuals, and understanding basic Spanish, for example, rnight not be enough to understand fiilly what a native speaker is saying- Similarly, two native speakers of Spanish from different cultures (e-g. European, Spanish, and Chicano) may not be able to understand each other as weU as two speakers fkom the same culture since partïcular words and ceferences are doubtless qWte different. These complexities will be exploreci in fiirther detail in chapter three, of the playwright in this regard; s/he only understands what Verdecchia choses to
translate. Inevitably, the effects of this conscious or unconscious choice are significant
both to the spectator and to anyone studyïng the effectiveness of the resistance of this
play -
In Mother Tongue, the central character Mimi acts as a kind of translater of her
brother Steve's Arnerican Sign Language (ASL) and her mother's Cantonese. Not only
does Mimi translate for the sake of the other chmers on stage, but she ofien translates
indirectly for the spectator as well. For instance, when Steve poses a question in ASL,
Mimi's spoken reply in English (presumably Steve cm read her lips) incorporates enough
information from the original question that the non-ASL fluent spectator can easiiy
follow the flow of conversation. However, particular words such as jingwei, jai, and
Chingming are spoken in the play (and scnpted) in ~antonese.~Although these words are
explained, they are not directly translated, likely pointing to their specificity to Chinese
culture and hence their status as untranslatabfe,
Since rninority languages are not consistently left witranslated in Mother Tongue
and Fronteras Americams, the extent to which the untranslated words' inclusion can be considered resistant is aiso inconsistent. Addolorata, on the other hand, provides no such
interpretations. Perhaps this is an indication of a greater measure of resistance, but the play's cultural context might suggest otherwise, There are no extended speeches in
It should be noted that the published script of Mother Toque does not provide Cantonese dialogue in Cantonese- Instead, Quan provides the words in Engiish, In Quan's words, 'Wis is to allow the acûess playing the part [of the mother] flexibility with the character and how much Chinese she wants to, or is able to, use" (6). So, by ''scripteci in Cantonese" 1refer to the dialogue that is designated to be performed in Cantonese by the playwcight's use of the marker "(C)" in the text The words to which 1refer to here in italics are the exceptions to this de,and appear in Cantonese (in italics) in the published script Addolorata that occur in a rninority language, and it is woahwhile to point out that the minority languages used in the play (mostly Eoglish and Itaiian with some Spanish) are not dificult for a non-native speaker to understand. Indeed, for the Montreal theatregoer,
Micone's iimited use of English and ItaEan might be quite inteiligibie. NonetheIess, understanding the words cannot be misread as understanding what is tdyking sa* mutuai understanding relies on more than just knowledge of a language, but also on shared experience.
As previously mentioned, the dialogue of the three plays under examination in this thesis moves back and forth between different languages. In Aditolorata, for example,
Johnny mostly speaks the French of the Italo-Que'bécois in Montreal, but periodically switches to English. These moments seem to occur when Johnny is fnistrated: as bis fiancée Lolita points out, every the he speaks English, he is angry (3 1): Switching back and forth between languages is cornmon among bilinguals, and is referred to by linguists as '%ode-switching." John J. Gumpen defines conversationai code-switching as 'me juxtaposition within the same speech exchange of passages of speech belonging to two different grammatical systems or subsystems" (59). Gumpen maintains that ''participants imrnersed in the interaction itseif are ofien quite unaware which code is used at any one time. Their main concem is with the communicative effect of what they are saying" (61).
Which language is used by the speaker and when in this kind of dialogue does not rely on
"a predetennined set of prescriptions" (61). Rather, Gumperz asserts, "it seems more reasonable to assume that they build on their own and their audience's abstract understanding of situational nom, to communicate metaphoric information about how they intend their worüs to be understood" (61).
To this end, whether one's intended meaning is communicated effectively
depends greatly on the experience of the inindidual or group of individuals to whom one
speaks. In the context of the theatre. the implications for the spectator are considerabIe.
If meanhg is so heavily weighted on shared understanding, a spectator who is not a
native speaker of the language spoken misses out. The spectator who Listens in on the
characters' conversation on stage (as in Addolurata and Mother Tmgue) appears to be as
disadvantaged in the bilingud exchange as the spectator whom the actor addresses
directly (as in Fronteras Americanas). although the latter situation is likely more
uncornfortable for the spectator and perhaps more dismptive. Gumperz goes as far to
suggest that "~]linguals,in fact, ordharily do not use code switchùig styles in their
contact with other bilinguals before they know something about the iistener's background
and attitudes. To do othemise wouid be :O risk serious misunderstanding" (69).
Gumperz implies that some kind of shared experience is required in order to understand
fully code-switching. In other words, knowledge alone of the languages spoken is not
enough for a spectator to understand Myandior correctly untranslated minority language
when it is spoken on stage.
Language as a means of domination and as a form of resistance to that domination
is a common theme in post-coloniaI theory, as is the phenornenon of code-switching- In
The Empire Wriies Buck, Ashcroft, Gnffiths, and Tien write, "the choice of leaving
words untranslated in pst-colonial texts is a political act'" (66). Moreover, they maintain that "untranslated words do have an important function in inscribing Merence. They
7 Unless the English translation is specifically quoted, al1 page ceferences to Addolorata will be to the
7 signify a certain cultural experience which they cannot hope to reproduce but whose
Merence is vaiidated by the new situation" (53). More recently, Elizabeth Gordon and
Mark Williams point out that in post-colonial writùig code-switching is used in
'%onsciously subversive political strategies by third-world writers in EngIish, a Ianguage
identified by many with colonization" (92). They Mermaintain that literary code-
switching '5s quickened by political purposes, charged with cultural urgency, engaged
with issues of power, exclusion and Iaaguage loss that have more immediate implications
than a modemist desire to e~chliterary language by drawing, often patronizïngly, on a
variety of dialectical and accentuai elements" (93).
Clearly, Canadian immigrant wrîters do not necessarily share the same colonial experience as the Maori and Afî5can writers of whom Gordon and Williams write.
However, the case may be made that Canada acts as though it is a colonizer of its own people, and with respect to Quebec, this case has ken made quite convincingIy~The
English language, moreover, increasingly functions giobaily as the language of
international commerce, of late-capitalist globalization, and of economic and cultural colonization. In any case, many new Canadians come from places currently or previously under colonial rule. Since the rnajonty of Canadian immigrants come fkom various parts of Asia (with the next largest groups coming fkom Eastern Europe, Central and South
America, and ~fica)~pst-colonial charactenstics in the writing of these new Canadians ought not to be dismissed,
French published text, See Soderlind, MorgirdAlias: The Cultural Colonizorion of Quebec.
9 This data is from the 1996 census (Statistics Canada). It is based on data cf people who immigrateci to Canada during the 199 1-1996 period, With respect to Canadian WTiting, others have argued that the use of multiple languages is indeed poIitica.1as Ashcroft et ai suggest, J. Paul Boudreau and Irene
Gammel argue that in Acadian poems and songs, code-switching plays an important role as a mode of resistance against "'a largely Anglo-centrk North-Amencan cornmercial and media culture" (53). Referring to the mixing of French and English in Acadian writing as
"linguistic schizophrenia," Boudreau and Gammel believe that %ban language mixing can be seen as a symptom of the minority cultwe's aIienation and colonization" (53).
Moreover, Boudreau and Gammel assert that their study of Acadian pets and songwriters shows that language rnixing is a '%oolof resistance" (52). They maintain that, "[alware of the threat of assimilation for the minority culture, poets and songwrïters strategicaily craft moments of language mixing and multiple languages to encode cntical opposition, mdti-voicedness and dialogicd provocation'' (55). Borrowing firom Bakhtin,
Boudreau and Gamme1 suggest that in celebration, a mhonty culture creates "a temporary freedom or 'space' of disengagement nom the dominant culture" (55). It is through dialogue-intrusiod0 that Acadian writers assert their own distinct cultural identity and at the sarne time oppose that of Anglo-centric culture around them.
The matter of a cultural minority's identity is dso key in Mary K. Kirtz's Iook at two plays by Ukrainian Canadian playwright Ted Gaiay. Here again, language becomes a central point of inquiry in the Canadian context. In Kirtz's view, for the
groups who came after the French and the English-the Gemans, Scandinavians,
Ukrainians, Italians, and so on .. . settlernent in a new country has involved a kind
'O Boudreau and Gamml coin the term "dialogue-intrusion" to signify the various types of language muing (code-switching, borrowing, and language transfer) that aïse in Acadian writing. of Faustian bargain: the accumulation of wealth in exchange for the loss of their
communal soul, a soul consisting of the language, myth, history, and ritual they
shared eariier in what now must become 'the old country.' (10)
For the immigrant, the loss of one's mother tongue is a price paid for success within the
new home counhy. To assert that language in a public space such as the theatre or the
Street corner, then, is to combat and to resist the dominant language of the new surroundings.
Although Kùtz does not tackle the issue of minority Ianguage in Gday's plays, she does examine how the theme of language loss is played out in Primrose School District
109 and Tsymbaly. She compares Galay's attempt 30valonze through drama the
Ukrainian experience in the Canadian west" to what she caiis Michel Tremblay's attempt to valonze Que'bécois culture with his introduction of joual into Quexcois theatre (11)-
Noting the obvious ciifference between the two situations %round the concepts of temtoriality and language," Kirs nonetheless draws an intereshg cornparison (1 1).
Lacking the political, linguistic, and territorial control that Quebec has, Ukrainiaa
Canadians face a ciiffïcult task in maintainhg their own identity. Kiaz contends that
Galay's primary focus is the issue of language, 'paaicularly the question of how a group' s stories are to survive if no one understands the language any more" (16). If the loss of one's hentage language is to be equated with the loss of culture, then it stands to reason that the assertion of the language is fundarnentally a fight for one's culture, one's sense of identity.
In this thesis, the phrase "mother tongue" will be used interchangeably with
''hentage language," both of which describe the primary htIanguage that a given person learns. The former tenn is the traditional expression used in census reports and the latter
a more recent, gender neutral term. In my view, each tenn is problematic. Although illustrative of the emotional comection between oneself and one's ktlanguage, "mother tongue" is unsatisfactory for several reasons. First, one is not necessarily raised ador taught to speak by one's mother. Second, the Ianguage of one's mother is not necessarily the primary first language of oneself. Lastly, use of the word "tongue" to denote
"language" is somewhat outdated with its biblicai connotations, and reinforces a static view of language; that is, language is not constady evolving, but rather fiazen in tirne.
On the other hand, "heritage language" erroneously implies that languages are also finnly located in the past, that they are somehow ancestral and that such culturai ancestries are homogeneous. For example, what is the heritage language of someone raised by parents of different cultures? Furthemore, each of these tenns has connotations that complicate its usage. "Mother tongue" seems to emphasize the emotional comection to one's primary first language, and in the context of this thesis, the phrase aiiudes to a play of the same name under study in chapter two. "Heritage language" is a less personal, so-caiied politically correct term that is therefore suggestive of the rhetoric of the Canadian federal govemment's multiculturalism policies and programs. Both terms have a nostaigic bent, and seem to invoke feelings of a lost past that might somehow be partiaily recoverable as
"ethnicity" through Saturday moming language classes or charïty dimers at the local
Italian Canadian club, but that can never play an active social and political role as a constantly evolving culture.
It is important to note at this point that my mother tongue is English; that is, 1was raised in Canada as English speaking. 1am by no means fluent in French, but 1have a fairly good grasp of the language, particularly in written form. My knowledge of Spanish and Italian is considerably weaker, and 1have never formdy studied either language. Io the course of this thesis, words or phrases that occur in the pIays that 1did not understand
1found rough trmsiations for thmugh the aid of the Intemet, and have so noted in my text when this has ken the case. Whenever possible 1have consulted native speakers of
Québécois French, Italian, and Spanish. However, my position in shidying Addolorata,
Mother Tongue, and Fronteras Antericanas seems clearr I am an Engiish speaking monolingual, an Ontario born and raised Canadian, and 1 am quite clearly a part of the
"Saxonian cornmunit. to which Wideload refers. And yet, since my patemal grandparents immigrated to Canada from Germany, is my heritage language Geman, or is it Polish as my surname might suggest? My materna1 grandparents are fiom Ontario, but trace their origllis to Ireland-an 1have more than one hentage language? Clearly, for me and for everyone else, the myth of pure cultural ongins is as fkaudulent as are the myths of pure races.
In Mother Tongue, there is an underlying fear of language and culture loss that is reflected in its nostalgie overtones- Mother Tongue's title seems to stress a sentimentalized importance of heritage language and the play's strong familial theme underscores the role of family in maintaining identity. Language is the root of the confiicts between members of the househoid; not oniy is there the problem of a lack of communication, but there are also the intense feeluigs of loss on the part of the mother.
Mother's haunting words at the end of the first scene, '4 am mylanguage. 1speak
Chinese. Your voices. Your words. You drown me out" are repeated again near the end of the play in scene ten, lending emphasis to the sipificance of her loss. Verdecchia, on the other hand, approaches the same issue hmthe perspective of "the individuai as a
social king," as Ann Wilson has pointed out (8). Moreover, Verdecchia employs a more ironic sense of nostaigia than Qum; his childhood memories are invoked to explode the
myths of originary culture rather than to reinforce them. In FronferasAmen'canas, the spectator is a witness to the personal journey of the playwrightlactor figure to discover that the "Border" is hls Wome" (74)-
Micone's approach to language and culture loss in AddoIorata derives fkom yet another point of view. Although a sense of nostalgia is present with the wedding invitations and funeral thank you notes that the centrai character writes in two tirne fiames separated by ten years, the play's centrai issues seem more focused on economics and the oppression of the Italian working class in Montreal. For example, Lulita embraces leaming English and French: " L'anglais et le hçais, j'és ai appris à l'école bilingue. A l'école bilingue français" (61)' but says, "Pour nous les Italiens, l'école est presque pas utile" (62). Giovanni, who is Johnny at age 29, insists that, "Dans un pays où les riches et les patrons mènent le gouvernement par le bout du nez, tous les pauvres, tous les ouvriers sont des immigrants, même s'i s' appellent Tremblay ou Smith. Si c'est pas nous aut' les ouvriers qui prenons les décisions, on n'aura jamais de pays- C'est pour ça qu'on est tous des immigrants" (57)- Micone relies heavily on class to explah the marginality of the ItaIo-Queoécois, but not to the point that he excludes ethnicity and gender.
Maria Ng debates the efficacy of minority language as resistance in her work on
Chinese Canadian writing. Ng surmises that "[tlhe linguistic universe of different didects fiom the southern provinces [of China] has no meaning for non-Chinese readers. The writer, with terms such as Poh-Poh (meaning grandmother in Cantonese), is using untranslated words to inscribe difference" (18 1). Quotïng Ashcroft et al, Ng acknowledges the straightforward argument that untranslated Language equais resistance that was introduced eariier in this chapter. However, she calls the simplicity of this position into question, and asks,
can this insertion of untranslated terms not be read as a new strategy of
exoticizing the Chinese cultute? f ust as Western readers from earlier times iinked
uiscrutable faces and ubiquitous pigtails to king Chinese, contemporary readers
who are familiar with wrhgfiom postcolonial India, Afkica, or the Can'bbean
might find a kind of cultural authenticity in dialogue conducted in layers of pidgin
English, italicized transiiteration, and quaint, made-up terms. (18 1)
Ng continues to argue that "[tlhe use of untranslated words is a double-edged sword" because, although "it does assert cultural difference," it also supports the illusion that these words can in some way solve the mysteries of the culture at hand. Ng dispels this illusion, contendhg that "the cultural references of these temcan ody have meaning for someone who knows the culture" (18 1). Nonetheless, the cl& to cultural authenticity put forth by the invocation of untranslated language are difficult to ignore. Echoing the words of iinguists who maintain that the effectiveness of code-switching in conveying thought depends on the background of the listener, Ng points to the cnix of this issue. menthe reader, or in the case of the theatre, the spectator, is subjected to untranslated terms that she does not have the background to understand hilly, does the "othering" that takes place outweigh the assertion of cultural difference?
To answer this question, Graham Hugganrsessay cZxoticismand Ethnicity in Michael Ondaatje's Running in the FamiCy7is usefûi. Huggan maintains that criticism of
Ondaatje for his dieged c'commerciaiiydriven exploitation of the exotic" (1 18) overlooks
the complexity of the relationship between ethnicity and exoticism: ''EEthnicity scoms the
exotic, yet it partakes of the exotic7' (1 19). Huggan concludes that
To write ethnicity is to advertise one's perceived ambivalence: it is, in part, to
consider oneself as other, as exotic. Ethnic writing involves much more than an
expression of the socid expenence of othemess. It ais0 concems alternative ways
of inventing onseIf, one's past, one's family-and of hding, or faiiing to £inci, a
space between others' words, others' fictions, others' languages. (124)
This search for space withh the dominant culture that Huggan finds in Ondaatje's novei/biography/travel memoir cm also be found in immigrant theatre. Most expiicitly,
Verdecchia's Fronteras Amen'canas seems to pardel Ondaatje's search for his roots in
Running in the Famiiy. Both works are imbued with ambiguity in terms of their socaiied
"authenticity": fiction or biography, travel memoir or exotic fantasy, the ambivalence of the experience seerns the only clear marker.
In Addoiorata and Moiher Tongue, as in Running in the Family, the importance of familial cultural hentage is present, but the status of the works as plays and as fiction, seems clear. Nonetheless, the narrator's suggestion to the audience to look for the thousands of Addoloratas on the streets of Montreal in the prologue of Addolorata implies that what happens in the performance also happens outside the confines of the theatre (10). Mother Tongue, on the other hand, lacks such a direct reference to the "red world" and only suggests a comection to it by allusions to unemployment insurance,
Chinatown, and Shaughoessy, the wealthy (white) neighbourhood in Vancouver. The seeming impossibility of inscribing ciifference without invoking othemess b~gsthis discussion back to de Certeau and the notion of tactics (as opposed to strategies) fiom within "institutionai heworks" (34). In nie Practice of Everyday Life, de Certeau defmes the tactics ~Econsumptionas the everyday ''victories of the 'weak' over the
'strong"' (xix). For de Certeau, the consumers (the ''wealr") are those who make use of the "products imposed by a dominant economic order"-that is the "strong" or the producers of society (a).He defines "strategy" as
the calculation (or manipulation) of power relationships that becomes possible as
soon as a subject with wiii and power (a business, an army, a ci& a scientific
institution) can be isolated It postdates apiace that can be delimited as its own
and serve as the base fiom which relations with an exterïority composed of targets
or threats (customers or cornpetitors, enemies, the country surroundhg the city,
objectives and objects of research, etc.) can be managed- (35-36)
Conversely, a "tactic" is "a calculated action detemiined by the absence of a proper locus.
No delimitation of an exteriority, then, provides it with the condition necessary for autonomy. The space of the tactic is the space of the other" (37). Similarly, as previously discussed, the space of ethnicity is simuitaneously the space of the dominant culture. It is de Certeau's notion of tactics, therefore, that acts as the theoreticai mode1 for reading the kind of resistance found in Addolorafu, Mother Tangue, and Fronteras AmeB'canas.
How do the weak overcome the strong fiom within? Using a capitalist metaphor,
De Certeau's reply is that the consumer achieves resistance to the producer through the practice of everyday Me, or "the very mcient art of 'making do"' (30). To explain this concept of the consumer making use of the producers' culture, de Certeau suggests that the spectacular victory of Spanish colonization over the indigenous Iiidian
cultures was diverted fÏom its intended aims by the use made of it: even when
they were subjected, indeed even when they aaepted their subjection, the hdians
ofien used the laws, practices, and representations that were imposed on them by
force or by fascination to ends other than those of their conquerors; they made
something else out of them: they subverted them fkom within-not by rejecting
them or by transformïng them (though that occurred as weii), but by many
different ways of using them in the service of mies, custorns or convictions
foreign to the colonization that they could not escape. (3 1-32)
Resistance is possible, this theory suggests, from within the dominant culture. Even though one may be a part of one's own domination (as in the case of ethnicity, where the very notion of "ethnicity" does not exist without a dominant culture), one can still subvea the "laws, practices, and representations" of the dominant culture for one's own purposes
(32). Accordingly, marginalized cultures, ethnic groups, or linguistic minorities use
"tactics" to resist domination; they wage battle '%thin enemy temtory" (37). With respect to the above example of Spanish colonization, the indigenous peoples, de Certeau maint ains, "me tap horized the dominant order: they made it hinction within another register. They remained 'other' within the system that they assimilated and which assimilated them extemaiiy. They diverted it without leaving it" (32). By resisting the dominant Engiish speaking culture fiom within by using English (and with respect to
Addoloram, French speaking culture as weii), Micone, Qum,and Verdecchia show resistance to dominant linguistic cultures,
Resistance in these plays very much follows de Certeau's mode1 of tactics (subversion fiom within) as opposed to strategy (where there is a clear delineation of
power). De Certeau's concept of everyday practices includes speaking as weii as
walking, reading, and cooking. He argues that "'speakers, in the language into which they
insert both the messages of their native tongue and, through their accent, through their
own 'turns of phrase' etc., their own history" alter the space around them (xxi).
According to this model, code-switching becomes a tactic by which minority peoples cm
assert their own identity
As Baz Kershaw suggests in his book The Politics of Per$ormance, there is great
potentiai for resistance in performance. In The Politics of Pe~unnance,Kershaw
explores the ways
theatre practitioners have trïed to change not just the future action of their
audiences, but also the structure of the audience's cornrnunity and the nature of
the audience's culture. .. . n]he main lever for such changes has ken the
immediate and ephemeral effects of performance-laughter, tears, applause and
other active audience responses. More fiuidamentaiiy, the Ieverage has been
applied to shift the culture of communities in particular directions because that
rnight bring about more widespread and lasting modifications in culture and
society as a whole. (1)
Assuming that "performance can be most usefully described as an ideological transaction between a Company of performers and the community of their audience," Kershaw
maintains that "ideology provides the framework within which companies encode and
audiences decode the simersof the performance" (16). The efficacy of a given performance, then, relies on its links to ideology and the audience's potential to generate meaning fiom the language of the theatre, including design, costumes, sound, and dialogue.
In chapter one, 1 will explore the way in which cultural context affects the relationship between resistance and domination with respect to the various minority
Ianguages in Marco Micone's A&oIorata. Micone creates characters that speak in the
French of the Italian immigrant working class of Montreal, and although most of the play is wrïtten in this non-standard French, Micone also inchdes Italian and Engiish in his script. In this context, AddoIorata appears to resist a homogeneous French Canadian culture. When his work is translated into English, however, the complications for
Addolorata are considerable. Not oniy are the effects of the untranslated English erased, but also the feel of the Italian immigrants' French is lost. As a result, the culturaI context shifts and the positions of minority and majority are overtumed.
In the second chapter, I will use Bakhtin's concept of heteroglossia to explore the resistance in Betty Quan's use of Engiish, Cantonese, and Amencan Sign Language
(ASL) in Mother Tongue. Mother and Steve each speaks in her/his own language,
Cantonese and Amencan Sign Language respectively, and together with Mimi's English, the three characters join to create a "sea of voices" that seems to resist the powerful and dorninating English language (13). The discussion of the complexities of cultural relationships that began in chapter one will continue since Mortier's and Steve7s respective languages and cdtures have consequences for the resistances effected by the play. As chapter two's analysis of Mother Tongue points out, to speak or to sign a
Eanguage is not the same as having a voice when that Ianguage is a minority one. Mimi, the English speahg daughter, acts both as translator for and betrayer of Mother's and Steve's ciifference. and in doing so both enables the play's communication with îts
English speaking audience and weakens the potential for resistance. It is Mimi's
translation, her attempt to build a "bridge" (45) between cultures, that undermines the
resistance to the hegemonic power of English afforded by the "sea of voices" technique
(13)-
In the third and final chapter, Guiilenno Verdecchia's Fronteras Amen'canas is the topic of study. Verdecchia brings my discussion of the complicated dationships of power and resistance to an appropriate close. Like Addolurata and Mother Tongue,
Fronteras AmenCanas resists the representation of ethnicity through the use of one unitary language. Spanish is used throughout the play to alienate, to expose, and to interrogate the ambiguous relationships between oppressor and victim. However,
Fronteras Americanas achieves a level of resistance that neither Addolorata nor Mother
Tong~rereaches. Verdecchia insists that language is a borderland, a hybnd space rather than the space between "two cultures, two memorïes" (77).
On their book's back cover, Steve Pile and Michael Keith's Geographies of
Resistance ask the foilowing question: "what are the spaces of resistance?" With their plays Addolorata, Mother Tongue, and Fronteras Amerïcanas, Marco Micone, Betty
Quan, and Guillermo Verdecchia provide important insight in working toward an answer to this complex question. In these plays, language becomes a site for resistance, a borrowed, ambivalent space, where who and what is the target of resistance is never certain. In this thesis, the udthem or ethnichon-etbnic binarism is explored through the playwrights' use of untranslated minonty languages. h deciding that their characters will express themselves in minority Ianguages, Micone, Quan, and Verdecchia not ody assert cultural identity, but they coilectively reveal that the border between minority and majority, between ethnic and 'csax~nian,"is necessariiy ambivalent and hybrid, In the end, success in resisting the hegemony of dominant ianguages comes ody with
Verdecchia's suggestion that the linguistic space of the border zone is in fact an inhabitable, dîaiogical space where he and 'W (his audience) need to be. Chapter One: Marco Micone's AdMorata
In this fktchapter, 1WU explore the complexities of the dationship between untranslated minority language and resistance in Marco Micone's Addolorata, which prerniered in Montreal in 1983. Micone uses the QueWcois language in such a way that he allies himself with the QueWcois people, but his insertion of Italian and English words and phrases not ody signifies the hybrïdity of Italo-Queoécois culture, but it also cas into question the "pure lame" (''pure wooi") vision of the QueWcois. Thus, the languages at work in Addolorata simuitaneously resist the ideology of a homogeneous
Que%écois culture and the ideology that imposes the English language as a unitary language. When translated into English, the context of the play changes, and the efficacy of the resistance to Que'bécois culture and English speaking culture is necessarily affected. The cultural specificity of the Que'bécois language and culture cannot be translated into English for an EngLish speaking audience, and resistance to a dominant
Québécois culture is secondary to other modes and objects of resistance at work in the
English version of Addolorata, such as resistance to the assimilation of immigrants and to the oppression of women and the working class.
To begh, ail of the languages of the play might be considered minority ones, depending upon the context in which Addolorata is received. For example, in a French speaking milieu, the play's English, Italian, and Spanish might constitute minority languages and in this context might serve to resist an ideology that suggests that
Que%écois identity lies in a shared language, religion. and history that focuses on racial, ethnic, cultural, and linguistic purity. However, in a broader Québécois context, Enash might also be considered a dominant language, the language of the rest of Canada and of the United States. In this view, the French language used in the play couid be interpreted as resistant to nearby Engiïsh speaking cultures and the Engiish used in the play can be seen as an intrusion of North American culture into the iïves of Que'bécois of any ethnic orÏgin. Furthemore, the non-standard French in Arldolorata might also be considered a minority language, even within Quebec, as it rnight represent the language of the wodeng class or the uneducated, and therefore resist the cultural and economic ehof that society. Even so, the particular Italian quality to Addolorata's joual might in turn be a marker of the Itaio-Queoécois comrnunity's presence in Monaeal and in Quebec, and might also resist the pure laine doctrine of a cdturaily "pure" and homogeneous
Que'bécois people.
Like many other Italian boni Canadian writers, Marco Micone came to Canada as a child, and as an adult he wrïtes about his experience of the complexities of the Italian community in Canada. Joseph Pivato, who has written extensively on Italian Canadian writing '' maintains that Italian Canadian writing difiers from other socded ethnic writing because Italian Canadians share a different relationship to their home country.
For the most part, Italian Canadians chose fieely to leave the country of their bïrth, Italy, whereas many other ethnic groups were "forced to leave because of famines, pogroms, or other forms of religious and political persecution" (Echo 109). Ties between Italian
Canadians and Italy are close, with many having family andor financial co~ectionsto the home country. Many writers write of the experience of returning "home" to Itaiy, as
11See Contrasts. a collection of essays edited by Pivato; Italüzn-Cd& Wnters, a report CO-ssioned by the Multicultural Sector of the Department of the Secretary of State; Echo, a collection of essays written by Pivato; as well as numerous academic journal articles, Pivato is the most prolific author of scholarly Micone does in Déjà l'agonie. The work of Italian Canadian writers in Quebec, or Italo-
Que%écois, may be written in French, English, Italiaa, or some combination of these
Ianguages- The work of these writers, such as Micone, Fulvio Caccia, Antonio
D' ALfonso, Bianca Zagolin, and others, mers signincantly fiom other Ltalian Canadian writing because it comes out of, and is directed to, a very different cultural context, With a population of 180 000 in the city of Montreal, the Italo-Québécois are a significant minorit. voice-
Since many Italian Canadian writers are bilinguai and even triliogual, they must choose which language to write in, and that decision is often tied to questions of cultural and persona1 identity. Pivato argues that the comection chat Italian Canadians feel toward Italy has multiple effects:
mhis knowledge that Italy is always there reduces the sense of exile or isolation that
has been a major part of the immigrant experience in other works. This freedom also
permits a delay in choosing between Myand Canada It contributes to the duality of
the Itaiîan Canadian experience; this cosmopolitanism is relished by some but is very
disorienthg to many. (Echo 10)
If it is in fact the case that ItaIian Canadians are more likely to retain a comection with
Italy than are other immigrant groups and are delayed in choosing which country to cd home, it foiiows that they might also retain their mother tongue to a greater degree than other immigrant groups. When it coma to the second language, Italian Canadians seem to choose the language with which they feel most cornfortable, and increasingly, this may
-- .- writing on Italian Canadian literanire, be the language of the public school system in which they were educated. I2
Many Italian Canadian writers mix languages in their writing just as they are
mixed in their everyday Iives. Pivato argues that "independently of the language or languages that the Italian Canadian wrïter uses, he or she is always translating. It often seems that the translation process becomes more important than the distant Italian reality it may be evoking" (Echo 125). Like other ethnic minonty writers, Italian Canadian writers have "the advantage of having transIated reality fiom one context to another aU of their lives," but, Pivato maintaias, Italian Canadian wrïters "talce this activity Mer through the use of a second language in their work. Unwilling to abandon their Italian background, they draw it into the Canadian sphere of consciousness by using the Itaiïaa language" (125). In this way, Italian Canadian writers use language to resist assimilation, and also to represent their unique experience fiom witfiin the dominant (non-Italian) culture,
With respect to Marco Micone and other Italo-Quek'cois writers, the issue of which language to write in is more cornplex. Their relationship with the French language is not simply explained by practicalities such as ease of conversation in d;ulv life or public education. The minority status that the two cultures share seems to permit a sort of kinship and understanding between Italo-Queoécois and Que'bécois. In exploring his own sense of identity, Italo-Quebe'cois writer Filippo Saivatore affirms the Italo-QueWcois comection to Que'bécois literature and culture as a whole: "1 have felt spiritual closeness and affection reading Quebec poets and writers.. . because their self-mation is similar
- ~~~~~ " Quebec's Bill 101 (1977) made it a requirement that children of immigrants would attend French primary and secondary schools. See Bourhis, 330-32 for merdiscussion of Bill 10 1 and its effects, Since Micone's own public education preceded Bi11 101, he wos educated in English, but he makes the explicitly to my search in some ways. 1like to hear the Quebec artist declare out loud his irreveaible appartenance to his geographical milieu'' (203). Just as the QueWcois fight agabst assimilation into Engiish Canada and the United States, the Italo-Québécois fight for their culture within Quebec. Moreover, Pivato suggests that "[tlhe Quebec motto 'Je me souviens"' can be adapted to descni Italian Canadian writers' sense of the past and the role Italians have played in Canadian history (1 11-12).
The connections between Italan and Quebécois culture are doubtiess significant factors in Micone's decision to mite in French. Not only do Italian and French share common Latin mots, but Itaiian and Que'bécois cultures share a European background.
Pivato wrïtes that "the similarïties between French and Italian languages and cultures create a sense of confusion so that these Dtalo-Quebe'cois] wrïters no longer know who they are. This sense of duality rnay take on characteristics of a double, a double who is recognized as part of the self, but also seen as other, foreign and, therefore, unknown"
(Echo 220). This hybridity, read here by Pivato as confusion, is evident in the multiple languages used in Italo-Que'bécois writing. The links between the two cultures extend beyond language, culture, and geography; both Italy and Quebec have been traditionally bound to Roman Catholicism, and both have experienced a deciine in the Church's power over social and political matters in recent decades. A shared experience of relïgïous worship, codes, and education might explain the Italo-Que'bécois's Linguistic integration with the Que'bécois in Montreal, an integration that is not shared, for example, by the
Jewish community which remains largely English speaking.
However, there is clearly a point where the mutuality between Italo-QueWcois
ideological choice of French as his primary language of expression.
26 and Queoécois experience ends, and another distinct culture emerges. Sdvatore etes:
1realize that the historîcal vision of Quebec that the intelligentsia and the
Péquistes offer does not correspond to what 1fed; the defeat on the Plains of
Abraham and that of the Patriotes in 1837 did not leave indehile psychic scars on
me. Psychologicaily, 1 am not part of a colonized people, and besides, my
sensitivity is fundamentally Mediterranean and Southem even if 1have been
transported to Northern climes, (203)
Neither Que'bécois nor Itaiîan, nor even Italian Canadian, the Itaio-Queoécois are rather a hybrid people who share sensibilities with ali three of these cultures, but are cleariy something else altogether. This hybridity is expresse& and ais0 mainrained, through multiple/rnixed language usage in conversation as weiï as in fiterature and theatre.
The multiple languages found in Micone's Addolorata are manifestations of Mo-
Que3écois reaiity. To be Italo-QueWcois in Montreai is to exist in a multi-lingual, heterogeneous culture that cannot be articulated or represented in a single language, that asserts itself fmt and foremost as hguistically different In Micone's play Gens du silence, the characten Mario and Gino Say together, "Je parle le calabrais avec mes parents, le fiançais avec ma soeur et ma blonde, i'anglais avec mes chums" (40). The various facets of Meare divided into linguistic categories, and each plays an important role. Fulvio Caccia insists that Italians in Montreal "maintain a complex relationshîp with language. This triangulation is rich in possibilities" (157). Part of the Itaio-
Québécois identity is this mixture of languages, wtuch both shapes and reilects the unique character of the culture. As Sherry Simon explains. "Cl] anguage becomes an instrument and a manifestation of authority. To master language (and this uivolves mastering p;irticdar languages) is to be able to impose one's interpretation of reality" (58).
The "pure laine" vision of Queoécois culture does not dowfor such hybridity;
nonetheless, Micone seems cornfortable with his position as an Italo-QueMois in an
independent Quebec. Historicaily, the province of Quebec has found its justification as a
"distinct society" in its clairn of cultural homogeneity, one common aocestry, language,
religion, and traditions. Criticized for its racist overtones and its lack of recognition of a
growing immigrant population combined with Low biah rates among "pure laine'' (so- called full-blooded QueWcois) populations, this justification has been dropped in favour of more political and economic approaches.
In his reaction to Jacques Parizeau's "L'argent et le vote ethnique" explanation for the defeat of the sovereignty question in the 1995 referendum, Micone dismisses the comment without taking offense, saying that "Plus de 95% des anglophones et des allophones ont voté contre l'indépendance. C'est pas un vote ethnique, ça?'(qtd. in
Lachance). Pat Domeuy of the Montreal Gazette cails Micone "an active supporter of the independence movement" and notes that his pohtical stance is not appreciated by members of the Italian community in Montreal (Domeliy FS). Micone insists that modern Quebec has moved beyond the rhetoric of "pure laine" and "it's faced the fact that it is a permanent métissage of different peoples" (qtd. in Conlogue). Although some are doubtful of Micone's optimism, his insistence on his Italo-Que'bécois culhue's place within Quebec is unmistakable, and evident in his theatre as much as his editorials and interviews, With A~olurata,Micone teils the intimate story of Italian immigrants who have grown up in Montreal at two different points in tune, prïmarily fiom the point of view of Addolorata (known as Lolita at age 19)' who suffers oppression as a member of the working class and as a woman.
Micone's decision to write in French is a political one. Simon writes that Micone
had the option of writing in several languages, and that the choice bC~arriessocial implications" (60). Moreover, she maintains that Micone' s reasons for choosing French as his language of expression were both cultural and politicaI. Speaking to bis feUow immigrants in Quebec, Micone states, "You can write what you wish, but oniy if you write in French will we have a chance of being understood and respected for what we are"
(qtd. in Simon, 60). Micone sees his work as having a political message that he wants the people of Quebec to hear, and has decided that the best way to communicate with them is to use their language in the theatre.
In Addoloruta, Micone chooses to have his characters speak in joual, the language of the working class of modem Quebec, and in doing so, he foiiows in a tradition which began in QueWcois theatre in the 1960s. Lucie Robert maintains that joual is
mostly an urban working-class language.. .[that is] always used in reference to a
particular social context. Lexical references are mostly work-place and city-
onented and a dictionary of joual wouId contain many English words, or words
adapted nom English. It would aIso point to a few morphological and
grammatical particdarism. (1 18)
Robert asserts that the most commoniy used devices in written joual are "the graphic elision of some letters or syiiables," "the inscription of accents into the written word," and "the use of idiosyncratic blasphemy" (1 18). In Addolorata, 'T'peux" (14) instead of
"je peux9'or "j'suis" instead of 'Te suis" (15) are used throughout the play by aIl the characters; "rnoé" and "toé" appear instead of "moi" and "toi" (29) to show Johnay's accent; and swear words such as "sacrament" also appear (33). Micone explains that his characters speak a language that he predicts wiii be the language that Italo-Que'bécois WU speak in the future, a hybnd language that încludes Italian variants of French words
(Simon 60). AU of these characteristics, dong with accents that are more noticeable in performance than in text, distïnguish the characters' speech fiom standard French and dowfor Queôécois audiences to recognize Addolorutu as part of thek e~~erience.'~
However, this connection is estabiished through more than the iiterd inscription of joual; the referential power of language also helps in creating a sense of comection with the spectator. As Robert argues, "mn its very use, joual designates a paaicular way of life and a social class" (1 19). Moreover, by invoking the laaguage of the Que'bécois people, Micone engages in the discourse of a distinct Quewcois culhm and a whoie history of language and identity stniggies. As Queoécois theatre translater Linda
Gaboriau contends, in "di Quebec theatre, there is an omnipresent, invisible character, and that is the Québécois language, The presence of that spoken language, whatever level the playwright might have chosen, is a statement in itseif, a statement of cultural survival, aspiration and communion" (87). In recreating on stage aspects of his audience's culture,
Micone presents what Elizabeth Burns cails "authenticating conventions" which "imply a connection to the world of human action of which the theatre is only a part" (qtd. in
Kershaw 26). Such conventions serve to connect the audience to the performance, to permit spectators to recognize the world on stage as a potential part of the world they know.
Direct and indirect references to popular Queôécois culture in the dialogue of
l3 It should also be noted that non-Québ&ois or non-French speaking spectatordreaders, such as myself, Addolorata also act as authenticating conventions. Baz Kershaw suggests that
[aJuthenticating conventions or signs are the key to the audience's successful
decodhg of the event's significance to their lives. They determine the audience's
reading of performance by establishing more or Iess transparent relationships
between the fictionality of performance, the 'possible worlds' created by the
performance, and the 'red world' of the audience's socio-political experience
outside the theatre. ... [qhey enable an audience to perceive the specific
ideological meanings of the show in relatively explicit ways. (26)
Considering the immense popularity of television in Quebec, references to Quebécois television are Wely to be quite familiar to QueMcois audience^.'^ Lolita speaks of M.
Pagliacci, the host of Radio-Canada's weekly ''telejournal au programme italien," as if he was a personal acquaintance (24). Furthemore, she speaks of working part-the at 'Za
Baie" (47) and reading the "T.V.Hebdo" (television listings)- Furthemore, the technique of naming in scene two where Lolita and Addoiorata read out the mailing list for Loiita's wedding invitations and Addolorata's mother's fimeral car& also accomplishes a comection with the audience. Rhyming off the names and addresses of what seem to be real people not only shows the movement of the Itaio-Québécois fiom Montreal to Saint-
Léonard during the ten-year gap between these two events, but also has important resonances with the Front Libération du Queôec (FLQ). l5 In media addresses, the FLQ
might have d=culty in notîcing the subtIeties of speech h performance (or in pnnt), 14 See Taras Grescoe's artide 'Tivi Nation" in which he discusses the unique relationship between the Québécois and television. In sum, he maintains that the Québécois not only watch a great deal of television (almost exclusively Québécois produceci tetevision programs compared to the rest of Canada where the most popula.shows are nom the US) but that "modem Quebec is dehed by its rivi" (70).
15 My thanks to François Paré for bringing this to my attention, who reports that this technique has dso been used by other cultural figures such as QuéMcois singer Gilles Vigneault wouid directiy appeal to individuals by name in an attempt to enhance the impact of their
message, and Micone seems to adopt a similar strategy in this scene. In making reference
to these common aspects of shared Queoécois experience, Micone funher establishes the
stage as a "possible world" (Kershaw 26).
Furthemore, the borrowing of language techniques fiom Michel Tremblay also
aids in authenticating the world presented on stage as a part of the audience's expenence.
Tremblay is noted to have made a tremendous impression on Que'bécois theatre in 1968
with his use of joual in Les bene-soeurs, and the joual in Addolorata likely has some carry-over effect hmthis "event" that "permanently chaoged the theatre scene in
Quebec" (Robert 119). Moreover, scene twelve's "La reine du foyer" chorus of "deux
femmes" is strikingiy rerniniscent of Tremblayys Les belles-soeurs (68).16 Tremblay's
"orchestration of voices in imitation of musical fond' (F-idlay 153) is reflected in the five women chorus that presents the daiiy routine of the Queb'cois housewife, which indudes laundry, cooking, shopping, and fighting with husband and ckddren, and is punctuated with the repeated refkain of les cinqsfemmes: "Pis le soir, on regarde la télévision!" (23-24). In Micone' s version in Addolorata, the two women speak in unison, six verses of six heseach, which are broken up with a four line refkain that varies in theme. Each verse addresses issues of oppression faced by the Italo-Queôécois woman, both inside and outside the home: "J'suis deux fois coupable, comme femme, comme immigrante" (70).Micone's use of joual in this particular style, the style of the great
Que%écois playwright, is indicative of an apparent attempt to nmily locate Addoorara as a Que%écois play and to appropriate Tremblay's writing style in attempt to gain his audience's favour, or at Ieast recognition.
Micone's use ofjoual and his characters' references to television are examples of sorne of the authenticating conventions at wodc in Addolorata that make the comection between the apparent reahty of the on stage pedormance (the "possible world") anci the actual reality of the audience (the "rdwodd"). When a "crisis of authenticating conventions" occurs on stage while the "rhetorical conventions" of the theatre (for example, the niles and practices that signai an understanding between actors and spectators about performance) are maintained, the result rnay be a "radical attack on the status quo" and the potential for efficacy, for resistant change, arises (Kershaw 27-28). In
Kershaw's view, the efficacy of a given performance is strongly comected to the context in which that performance is received because "audience members always have a choice as to whether or not a performance may be efficacious for thexn" (28). Moreover, intertextuality is also a factor in this choice because the various "ways in which a performance text gains rneaning for an audience through its relationship to other texts"
(33) have an impact on how a performance is received. Lolita's references to television prograrns might be one example of this intertextuality; Micone's mimicry of Tremblay's musical style rnight be another. Each of these examples helps audiences to accept the world presented on stage as akin to their own-the references to other texts help to confithat the possible world of the play converges with their experience of reality.
methe relationship that Micone builds between his audience and the action of
Addolorata is constituted through authenticating conventions, the crisis of these conventions occurs when he inserts Italian words and phrases. The Italian in the script
l6 Once again, I am indebted to Dr. Pace, who suggested to me that Mïcone's scene resembles the style of
33 serves as a marker of difference, but ais0 as a way to subvert the authority of the dominant French speaking Queaécois culture as weii as that of the giobai authority of
English. Even a single Italian word inserted in the text can function to resist homogeneity, and simuItaneousIy assert Italo-QueWcois experience. For example, Lolita, both at age 19 and at age 29 (as Addolorata), uses the word "villaggio" several times in the play, and thereby invokes the comection to Itdy discussed earlier in this chapter (19,
63,66,89). To use Italian to refer to the home country signals a refusal to let go of sorne part of Itaiy, and this refusai creates a nostalgie sense of a lost past that resudaces throughout the play. However, Lolita/ Addolorata's use of Italian also shows that she (in both thefiames) is not Wiy Que'bécois because her understanding is, at least in part,
Italian. The word vikggio to LolitdAddolorata represents her dpast; although just a single word, vilEaggio cornes to represent another signiSing system, a whole other expenence or culture. BRnging to mind more than mental images of a rural village, the view of the surroundhg mountains, or the smell of the olive trees, the word itself evokes another heof reference. With situational code-switching, in which Monica Heiler notes languages are associated with a particular "social separation of activities," languages "corne to symbolize the social situations, roles, and statuses and their attendant rights and obligations, exceptions, and assumptions" (5). Villaggio has the potential to constitute a crisis for the Que'bécois audience, and therefore allow the possibility of a breach in the status quo, a breach in the ostensibly seamless wall of a Queôécos cultural fortress.
Other Italian in Addobruta mostiy comes fkom Giovanni, and not bis younger
Labelles-soeurs, self, Johnny. Most of Giovanni's Italian words are spoken in anger and contempt toward
Addolorata, and seem to indicate that he has grown into the role of the oppressive patnarch, the role played by her father whose authority she had tried to escape with her maniage to the young Johnny. Again, Italian provides a connection with the past, but also a possible cnsis of Queoécos homogeneous identity. With Giovanai's cries of
"porcocane" (45,53.54.82,85,86) Micone disrupts the connections he has made with his Québécois audience as he loudly announces the ciifference, the heterogeneity of the
Italo-Queoécois community and hence the Quexcois community as a whole. The last words of the play are in ItaLian, showing Micone's unwillingness to provide French speaking Queoécois the Iast word. Giovanni's admission of weakness ("Non posso vivere solo") might suggest more than his personal defeat (94). Perhaps this statement that Giovanni cannot iïve aione implies that the Italo-QueWcois aiso cannot surnive without Quebec, or that the Que'bécois cannot continue without them. By suggesting a symbiotic retationship between the two cultures, Micone further implies an ideological cnsis that may constitute the political efficacy of his play.
The use of English phrases and words also asserts the uniqueness of Micone's community and points toward a cnsis in the pure laine ideology. Like the older version of his character, Giovanni, Johyuses minority language to express his anger and emotion. 1t is also significant that his exclamations of ccChrist"and 'Fuck" are directed at
Lolita; his anger, exposed in English, seems to be a precursor to Giovanni's outbursts in
Italian ten years later. That Johnny seems to need to express bis anger in English is indicative of his Italo-Quelbécois make-up; since part of his reality is English speaking, he must express himseif in that language, which is the language of his fkiends, the language of cursing, and most importantly, the language of the workplace. Similar to Giovanni's
admission of "Non posso vivere solo," Johnny expresses his disappointment in losing his job: "1 had a trade. Fmaily. 1 had a trade.. .Christ. I was beghing to feel important"
(34). This moment's sense of honesty seems to stem fiom the English used in expressing
it. The contrast between Johnny's almost constant swearing in English and this admission of weakness once again implies that English is a part of bis identity.
Specificdly, English is the Ianguage of his workpiace. and Johmy/Giovanni is thus allied with the Queoécois working class ("même s'i s'appellent Tremblay ou Smith" [57) who aiso answer to anglophone bosses. Once again the political and social power of the
English language becomes a central issue in this play. In the next two chapters, the dominating role of English in the world of work will continue to be an issue.
Similarly, the scene in which Lolita's brief Spanish dialogue appears articulates the general role of language in Italo-Que%'cois identity. Unlike Johnny/Giovanni, Lolita is openiy articulate about the role of language in her He. Each language has its own place, and Lolita adapts to suit the various groups of people in her life: "Je peux aussi parler l'anglais avec mes amis, le français avec les gens d'ici, l'italien avec les fatigants et l'espagnol avec certains clients. le m'ennuie jamais avec mes quatres langues" (63).
Lolita sees her multi-bgualism as functionai, but ais0 seems to attribute emotionai significance to it. She insists that knowing four languages gives her agency: "Avec quatre langues, je peux me marier sans crainte. Si Sohyco~aissait quatre langues, j'suis sûre qu'y aurait moins peur de se marier (61). For Lolita, the multi-lingual Italo-QueWcois have the advantage of king able to shi£t from one cultural coatext to another. Describing her Spanish teacher as "hermoso y caioroso," Lolita code-switches to a combination of Spanish and 1talianTt7which fiuther asserts her complex relationship to language. Lolita seems not just to think in temis of separate languages, but in ternis of some combination, or hybrid form-
Before explo~gAddoforata Merby considerhg its English translation. it might be usehil to discuss bnefly the complexities of translation in more general terms.
The translation of any text is a complicated undertaking because language and meaning are so iuhicately connected to culture and experience. In order to translate a text effectiveiy, as Amie Brisset argues, 'thanges have to be such that the work becomes acceptable, that is to Say, foilows the set of codes that govem, to various degrees, the discourse of the target society" (4). When it cornes to translating theatre, a whole other set of codes must be adhered to, including "actantid, narrative, dialogic, stage-direction, and set-design codes" (5). Moreover, the political and cultural relationship between
Quebec and the rest of Canada seems to make translating Que'bécois theatre into English an especidy sensitive task.
As a translater of dozens of Queôécois plays, Linda Gaboriau has useful insight into the unique obstacles to translathg Que'bécois theatre. One such diflïculty is that actor training in English Canada mers fiom the approach taken in Quebec:
Quebec playwrights have no scrupules [sic] about writing rhetorical sades, and
sometimes English-Canadian actors who have been trained for a different
performance style find it quite diff?cultto handle these texts. OccasionaUy, the
results on stage can be quite am,sornething like the effects of a dubbed movie,
when the gestures don't always match the intonations of the language. The
" In Spanish, hermoso y means "'beautifuland." In Italian, caloroso means "warm." Thes translations are
37 audience is seeing one play and hearing another. (84)
In translating a play, therefore, one bas to take into account the cultural background of the performers as weil the audience who interpets the action on stage, and how these factors
Vary nom the ongùial to the target culture. She hiaher maintains that the Quewois audience is very much aware of this "invisible character," and that this "preoccupation with language, the constant awareness of the importance of speaking French" is impossible to translate (87). Since the language and culture of English Canadians is not under constant threat, there is no cornparison to be made, and hence no translation.
However, it stands to reason that the Italo-QueWcois Ianguage used in Adfoloratu functions in a similar way for Quebec audiences than a perhaps more typical uses of joual. Accordingly, an Engiish translation of Addolorata cannot capture this intangible level of meaning that exists when Lolita/Addolorata and Johnny/Giovanni speak on stage with a QueWcois audience before hem,
The decisions made by translater Maurizia Binda in the English version of
Addolorata have implications that extend beyond the fiteral meaning of the text since her translation is not simply between languages, but between cultures. For instance, the untranslated English that appears in the original text is simply transported into the
English version and becomes lost, quite literaily, in the translation. What began as a moment of cesistance, a jarring break fiom the French that rnost of the play is written in and a flash of Italo-Que'bécois hybrïdity, becomes ordinary and unremarkable amidst the
English dialogue that surrounds it. Furthemore, that English is the Ianguage of the workplace for the Italo-Que%cois and the QueWcois in general is also lost in the from dittp://www.onlinetrans.c~mlsystran~cgi>
38 translation, as is the comection between the two cultures that this shared experience allows.
Another moment in A&folorata when the translation between cultures seems to break down is the previously mentioned chorus scene near the end of the play. Micone's
"Les reines du foyer" scene (68-71) is considerably longer. there are over twice the number of lines as in the English translation. Rather than six verses of six lines, Binda has written the English scene with £ive verses of four lines each. Moreover, the varyiag, four-line rekain of the original text is reduced to a repeated somewhat dry two-iine 'TU. be a queen for a long thelThis trophy will aiways be mine" in the translation (142-43).
Such a drastic cut in the text does not occur elsewhere in the translation; for the most part, Binda has closely adhered to the original text and her scenes are not any shorter aside fiom what is typical of a translation fiom French to English. The rhyming patterni8 and overall musicality of Micone's scene is also missing fiom Binda's flatter, more stilted version lg. The musical, surreal quality of Micone's chorus scene is indicative of
Gaboriau's point that the style of Queoécois theatre is difncult to translate for an Engiîsh
Canadian stage (Gaboriau 84-85). Moreover, the inter-texnial quality of this scene might be lost on an English Canadian audience who might be as familiar with Tremblay' s Les belles-soeurs, but who would not feel the connection to joual or the significance of
Tremblay to Québécois theatre and culture. Binda's version not only differs in quantity of words and meter, but also in what is said and how. The English translation is a watered down version of Micone's text; it is less vulgar, less angry, less charged with emotion.
'' The rhyming scheme of Mkone's verses varies but generaiiy follows either AABBCC or DDDDDD. l9 Binda's verses foilow a consistent ABCC pattern. Instead of attempting to transIate the highly contextua1 lyrical verse of scene tweive,
Binda has opted to rewrite the scene almost entirely for her English Canadian audience.
Aithough in the rest of the play Binda foiIows the original text quite closely, the presence of English words in the original play results in a smaü but signincant change in the text. In the original scene four of Acidolorata, Johnny swears in English (as is his custom as opposed to Giovanni who swears in Italian), and Loiita says to him, "Chaque fois que tu parles en anglais. c'est que t'es fâché" (3 1). However, this hewouid not make sense in the translation because Johnny speaks English all the tirne. To accommodate a translation of this he,Binda chooses to have Johnny swear in Itaiian, and for Lolita to Say "Every tirne you speak Italian, it means you're angry" (106). By making this subtle change, Binda contradicts the convention set out by Micone in the original text where the young Johnny swears in English and only the older Giovanni swears in Italian. In doing so, not oniy does the translation lack the resistance asserted by
EngLish, but it also lacks the relationship between Johnny and English and Giovanni and
Italian. One possible way of dealing with this problem wouid have been for Binda to replace the Engiish of the original text with French in the translation. Although the effect would not be exactly the same as the original script, a similar feeling of a surprise attack, a seizing of "the chance offerings of the moment" (de Certeau 37), rnight mimic the sense of the English as a tactic of resistance.
In the English version of Addolorata, the audience changes kom Que'bécois to
English anad di an:^ and as a result, the context in which the play is received aiso
" 1 have made some assumptions here that require Merexplanahon. Since Addoforata was originally written as a play to be performed in Montreal, 1 assume that the intended audience of the ongind script was people living in and around Montreal. 1have also assumed that the English version was primarily directeci changes. To begin, Micone's attempt to represent the spoken language of the Italo-
Que'bécois is absent for EngLish Canadian audiences, Furthennore, since LoliW
Addolorata and Johnny/Giovanni speak Engiïsh in the translation, they become a minority only in a technical sense; without the French language as a marker and the use of English to refer to the world of work aione, the Queoécois aspect of their cultural identity disappears. Aside fiom occasional mention of Quebec, Que'bécois, or Montreal,
Addolorata/Lolita and Johnny/Giovanni seem to [ose a p~cipalaspect of their hybridity and become Italian Canadians, a minority withui a much larger majority, with whom little experience of oppression and cultural surwivmice is shared.
Untranslated Italian remains in the Engiish version, however, and effectively acts as a tactic of resistance. Tactics, as de Certeau describes them, are modes of resistance that "use, manipulate, and divert" the spaces of the other (30). The Italian words and phrases that Giovanni speaks in Binda's translated Addolorata are the same as those that
Micone originaily scripted. The piercing anger of Giovanni's voice as he hurls Itaiïan curses at Addolorata is evident in both versions of the play.
Another substantiai aspect of Addolorata that is translate0 effectively into English is the oppression of the working class immi&rantand the sense of double oppression of women. The didacticisrn of Micone's text with respect to the sufîering of the working class immigrant is evident in Giovanni's speech in scene seven, which is tcanslated quite effectively in EngLish for an English speaking audience: 'If immigration was a good mg, it wouldn' t have been left to poor people Mce our parents and ourselves. .. .Who does the dangerous jobs, the low-paying jobs? We do. It's always us, the immigrants.
toward English speakers outside of Quebec,
41 It's not working at home that killed your mother. It was her boss at the factory who made
her do piece-work" (122)- Sirnilarly, as Micone himself points out, with Addolorata, he
wanted to represent the story of the immigrant woman: "je voulais dénoncer la double
oppression de La femme immigrante; sa marginalisation vient de sa situation de femme et
d'immigrante, qui lui attire un certain rejet C'était le première fois qu'on voyait sur
scène un tel message, vu par les yeux d'un immigrant'* (Mïcone 1996). Jane Moss Mer
describes this theme as located very much outside of the cultural specincity of Quebec,
arguing that Addolorata CCdramatizesthe double oppression of the immigrant woman: exploited by the capitalïst economy as a member of the working class and by the patriarchal values of tradition-bound Italian-Catholic society" (78). This view of
Addolorata is not affected by the transIating of the text into English because this oppression is not exclusive to Itaio-Que'bécois culture.
Both versions of Micone's Addolorata function in ways that are resistant to the status quo, but as previously discussed, the cultural context surrounding the play detennines the ultimate efficacy of the performance. The use of Que'bécois language and cultural references in Addoloratu helps Micone establish authenticating conventions that aUow for the efficacy of the English and Italian languages' resistance to traditional
Québécois ideology that clings to the idea of a unitary language and culture. When
Addolorata is translated into English, the cultural context of the play changes and consequently, the efficacy of the performance changes. In the English translation, what is
Ieft is the resistance put forth by the Italian language to the ideologïcai dominance of
English Canada that sanctions the cultural and linguistic assimilation of its immigrants.
As well, the resistance to an economic ruiing class that exploits the immigrant working class and the patriarchal system that oppresses women in particular is enhanced in the
English version since issues of language and cultural hybridity are vimiaiiy non-existent.
The title of Micone' s t play, Gens du silence, which is published in the same volume as the English translation ofArldolorata, clearly articulates hîs position on the political power of his community. Translated into English as 'toiceless people," the titie suggests that with his theatre, Micone provides a voice to a people who might otherwïse be silenced. Ih the next chapter, lack of voice WUbe discussed in regard to Betty Quan's
Mother Tongue,in which much more contrasting minority languages are used in a different way to assert resistance. Chapter Two: Betty Quan's Mother Tongue
Betty Qum's Mother Tongue not only explores the gaps between fktand second generation Canadians through the experience of the Chan family, but dso the gaps between languages and cultures. To b~gtogether the languages and cultures of her characters in a dialogical space, Qum uses heteroglossia to create a "sea of voices" which consists of Cantonese, American Sign Language (ASL), and English (13). Such a space has the potentiai to resist the tendency of English to function monologicaily, and in the context of Mother Tongue, to flatten the ciifferences between Mother, Steve, and Mimi.
For English speaking spectaton who do not understand Cantonese or ASL, this resistance is no longer as effective since the voices of Mother and Steve are necessarily mediated through Mimi, who acts as a translater of language and culture for the audience as weU as for the characters themselves. In addition, Mother Tongue seems to lament a lost heritage, a partiaiiy recoverable past culture, which cmbe revived ody in a static form.
The play's nostalgie overtones serve to contain difference, whether in the fom of ethnicity or deafness, rather than to allow for and encourage a living and constantiy evolving culture,
The use of multiple voices in Mother Tongue brings to mind Mikhd Bakhtin's essay c&ed "Discourse in the Novel." Accordîng to Bakhtin, the novel is unique as a genre because it consists of a c4diversityof social speech types .. . and individual voices, artisticaily organized" (262). These sociaily diverse voices make up what he cas heteroglossia, which includes mmy variations within a given national language including
"social dialects, characteristic group behavior, professional jargons. generic languages, languages of generations and age groups, tendentious languages. languages of the authorities, of various circles and of passing fashions. languages that serve the specinc sociopoliticai purposes of the day, even of the hour" (263)- The national or unitary
Ianguage, which is an official or Iiterary language (e-g. English, French, and German), exists at the other end of the spectnim fiom a single Ianguage, the language of the individual. The unitary language, according to Bakhtùi, "is a system of linguistic nom.
But these nomdo not constitute an abstract imperative; they are rather the generative forces of linguistic Me, forces that stniggle to overcome the heterogiossia of lmguage. forces that unite and centralize verbal-ideoioglcai thought" (270-71). Bakhtin refers to this unifjring force of unitary language as centripetal because it draws the various penpheral languages to itself, that is, the centre point- Conversely, the languages of the individual are subject to a centrifugai force, which constantly fragments and decentralizes the unitary language. Thus, "[aJIongside the centripetal forces, the centrifuga1 forces of language carry on their uninterrupted work; alongside verbal-ideological centralization and unification, the uninterrupted processes of decentrakation and disunification go forward" (272). Therefore, not only is there constant variance between languages (e-g.
Chinese versus English) but also among languages (e-g. English in Chinatown versus
English in Shaughnessy) as well as within a single language (e-g. the various meanings of a particular word as detennined by shifting contexts).
When it cornes to human commuiïcation and interaction, the spaces between and among these various languages become significant. These spaces are the sites of dialogue. the spaces wherein cultures meet and each word that spoken is mediated by countless factors. As Bakhtin wrïtes: The Living utterance, having taken meaning and shape at a particdar historical
moment in a sociaIIy specific environment, camot fail to bmsh up against
thousands of Living dialogic threads, woven by a socio-ideologicai consciousness
around the given object of an utterance; it cannot fail to become an active
participant in social dialogue. Afier aii, the utterance &ses out of this dialogue as
a continuation of it and as a rejoinder to it-it does not approach the object fkom
the sidelines. (277)
Since each word exists in social dialogue, each word must therefore have its own connotations and associations. As Bakhtin phrases it, "Celach word tastes of the context and contexts in which it has lived its sociaily charged life; ail words and forms are populated by intentions" (293). As such, cclanguagelies on the borderhe between oneself and the other. The word in language is haifsomeone else's. It becomes 'one's own' oniy when the speaker popdates it with bis own intention, his own accent, when he appropriates the word, adapting it to his semantic and expressive intention" (293).
Communication of thoughts or ideas only seems possible when there is a shared understanding of context. 1t foiiows that the greatest potential for understanding occurs when individuais share the most in common with respect to social and historical context, or cultural memory. In the situation of the theatre, where there is constant communication and interaction between actors and spectators, shared context between those on stage and those in the audience becomes especially important (as discussed in detail in the first chapter with respect to Addolorata).
Between the characters themselves in Mother Tongue, there seems to be Little shared "semantic and expressive intention" (293). Mother, Mimi, and Steve speak different languages and relate to different cultures and social contexts- Mother is a fifty-
three year old immigrant fiom China who does piecework at home, celebrates Chinese
religious holidays, and speaks Cantonese as well as limited and accented English. Mimi
is twenty-two, and has won a schoIarship to study architecture in Ontario. She speaks
unaccented English, an ability that has facilitated her pst-secondary education, her
scholarship to Queen's University, and her future ability to succeed as an architect. As in
Addolorata, the language of the workplace is clearly Engiish. In addition, Mimi speaks
some Cantonese, and also signs. Her sixteen-yeardd brother Steve has ken deaf since
he was eleven, goes to a school for the de&, and is fluent in ASL. He can vocalize
English words, but avoids doing so because "[hie thinks he might sound stupid" (24).
The family's linguistic differences serve as a marker for theîr underlying culturaV contextual differences, and result in the family's communication problems and lack of mutual unders tanding and acceptance.
Furthemore, the tremendous differences between Cantonese, English, and ASL add greater depth to the culaual conflict between the family members. Cantonese is one of the many languages of China, and although each of these languages is related and shares a common written system, speakers of each laquage cannot understand one another (O'Grady and Dobrovolsky 525-27). Chinese is based on a system of thousands of characters, and because it is a tone language, the meaning of words varies according to the pitch of a given pronunciation (37). Bennet Lee, coeditor of the anthology of
Chinese Canadian wrîting titled Many-Mouthed Birdr, notes in his introduction the particular case of Chinese languages:
Chinese is a high-context language that assumes a commonly shared cuiturai identity and world view which requires explanation to make the
translated text accessible to the non-Chinese reader. This exercise can be
self-defeating, Like explaining the punchline to a joke. (3)
That an "explanation" of Chinese cuiturai identity can be realized is naive because there
are simply too many variables that make up any culture to ever provide a comprehensive explanation of it. However, Bennett's point that a fiteral translation of words does not constitute a translation of meaning is weii taken, and can be applied to any language. As previously discussed with reference to Bakhtin's writing on language, the connotations of
a "living utterance" are subject to social and culturai context as weU as the speaker's intentions (277).
The English language, on the other hand, has its own connotations in terms of cultural associations. Modem Standard English, denved nom Germanic and Latin language families, foiiows the Roman alphabet. English. because of its ties to Great
Britain and because it was used as a tool for assimilation during colonial mie, often shares an awkward relationship with its speakers. Canadian born writer Sky Lee reveais her expenence in an interview with the Vancouver Sun in 1990:
Our generation is the fint generation to regain a voice. Our original cuituratvoice
was lost in the process of being displaced from China to Canada That move takes
severai generations. I'm often ashamed to Say that my voice is in my colonizer's
language, in EngIish. 1am not fluent or iiterate in my hentage language.
(Andrews D17)
In this context, voice represents power in the sense that to have a voice means to have one's interests not only heard, but aiso Iistened to, by whoever holds power. Lee also suggests that language and voice are related; since her literal voice is in the language of
what she terrns her "colonizer," her "original culturai voice" is lost, and the opportunity
for agency fds apart- The second generation's atternpt "to regain a voice" is secondary-
Feelings of nostalgia in Lee's "lost" culture and ''heritage language" are similady
reflected in Mother Tmgue in the play's title, and in the fact that Mlmi dreams in fluent
Chinese (22), and in Mother's recwrhg statement "I am rny Ianguage" (14).
English has corne to play a powerful role in neo-colonîalism, and it is a
dominating presence on the Intemet and in global popular culture. Whereas Chinese has
the greatest number of mother tongue speakers in the world (estimated at one billion),
Engiish has the greater number of official language populations (estimated at 1-4 billion).21 The number of mother tongue speakers of Chinese cdsinto question the
authority comected to the Engiish language in its current role in global culture. English's
status as the top official langage despite its relatively few mother tongue speakers, serves to demonstrate the extent of the increasing power of English speaking-nations and corporations, and their colonial/neo-colonid rule.
Whereas sorne marginalized groups have Engiïsh forced upon them both to replace their mother tongue and to take away their opportunity for power, American Sign
Language was developed to empower the hearing impaired, to provide a way of communicating with others, ASL is based on physical movements of the hands and relies on gestures as well as facial expressions. Sherman Wiicox maintains that "ASL is a fully developed human language, one of the hundreds of naturally occurrïng signed languages
21 See Crystai, 448. English is second behind Chinese in tem of the most mother tongue speakers, with an estimated total of 350 million, As the text notes, the official Ianguage population figures should not be interpreted as the number of speakers of the language because many couniries have official languages that a of the world. It is not a denvative of English. .. Xhere is abundant linguistic research on
ASL demonstrating that the grammar of ASL is radicaily different fiom English" (see
Wilcox). It stands to reason. then, that just like any other language, ASL signifies a way of experiencing and understanding the wodd. As Qum points out, "[n]ot only does ASL rely on the movement of han& and hgers, it dso relies greatly upon a person's facial expression. Mimi and Mother can try to bide behind their spoken words. Stephen, when using ASL, cannot" (Quan "Mothei')- ASL is as different fkom English as Cantonese might be, and vice versa Quan's choice of these particular languages instead of more closely related languages such as English and German or Italian and Spanish, suggests a deliberate statement about clifference and ethnicity. Quan iasists that culture is about
"more than what a person's physical outward appearance is (e.g. the colour of hisher skin)"; rather, language is "innate" to an individual's identity:
That is one of the reasons why 1chose to give the character, Stephen, the language
of sign, 1 studied Amencan Sign Language for a year and what 1found in
interviews and in research was that deaf individuais in hearing families often felt
more comected to other deaf people-more so than their own families. h fact, the
phrase 'deaf culture' seemed to be an acceptable and indeed, preferable, means of
defining a deaf person's identity. So again, language equais culture equals
identity. (Quan "Mother")
Cultural difference in Mother Tongue relies heaviiy on language as opposed to ethnicity, and it is through language that the play resists the monologic authority of English and
English speaking dominant culture. significant portion of its population does not speak.
50 In Mother Tongrre, Quan creates a "sea of voices," out of which each individual stmggles to have herlhis voice heard and recognized (13). In the opening scene of the play, a "voice/overmontage iike a sea of voices ebbing andflowing, cumng and intercutthg, re~erberating'~envelops the darkened stage (13). Mother speaks in English:
'4am my Ianguage- 1speak Chinese. Your voices. Your words. You drown me out"
(14). MetaphorïcaUy, the mother appears to be drowned out by the voices of her children, but her use of "you" might also be a reference to the audience. The voice of
Steve asks, ''Did 1stop hearing her?" and commands "Listen to my hands as 1speak to you" (13)- Out of the darkness, the audiences hear Steve's desire for communication and his fnistrations with this inability to speak and to be listened to, both literally and metaphoncaliy. Through Mimi, the audience is introduced to dreams of the past and of her father. The three voices creating the effect of the sea imply a sense of unity and cornmon purpose to each of the character's stmggles, and serves to set the tone for the ensuing cultural clashes.
In scene ten, Mother and Steve participate in an important exchange, one that highlights the nature of their cultural conflict. In this scene, the mother repeats her words of the opening sequence, btin Cantonese and then in English, but adds more precise water imagery and a reference to the Other: "Ih this ocean 1am swimming and 1 am underwater and 1camot speak. Mat? 1cadt hear you. I am rny laquage; 1speak
Chinese. Your languuge is not Chinese, Your voices, your words- 1cannot understand,
You drown me out" (42 my emphasis). Since Steve is looking down, he cannot read her iips so his mother's words do not reach him, only the spectator. The water imagery echoes a moment in scene two in which Steve compares his experience of deafhess to king underwater. At the end of scene two, Steve is "barhed in blue light* He tums to the audience ...he tells his story" (17). Although at bthe only mouths the words, and "'itis as ifthe audience has becorne deaj" instead of him, Steve slowly begins to explain his story, "It's like liquid. Drowning. .. . 1 feel my voice coming from inside my body. ...Air forming into sounds I can't hem. hto words 1 can't speak. Into sentences no one will listen to" (17). Steve attributes his lack of voice, both physical and metaphoncal, to his deahess, which is represented here by the imagery of water. The direct parallels between scene two and scene ten illustrate the common ground that Steve and his mother share: they both feel voiceless and powerless, and are unable to communicate with each other.
Just as Mother cannot seem to reach Steve in scene ten, Steve's attempt to communicate in this scene is also blocked by language. At ht,he speaks with his inner voice, and no one hears him but the audience. As he repeats himself in ASL, he grows more angry, 4culrnostthrowing his sigm at her" (42)- Mother ignores his caiI for her in
English (because Steve is "speaking as a deaf person would"), and oniy acknowIedges his presence when he cails for her in Cantonese (42). This breach in the wdi that divides them is only temporary; just as quickiy as the mother looks up, she lowers her head.
However, this moment of recognition is created by Steve's brief transfer into her world, into her discourse, through language, Although the engagement between cultures and separate experiences is fleeting, language is the space where the cultures of mother and son corne together in this scene.
The gap between the cultures of Mother and her children is also expressed through her nostalgie sense of her lost hentage. At the end of scene three, the rnother speaks about her past in her "innet voice," and the monologue's importance is underscored by the repetition of the speech in Cantonese and English. Wondering why she "ever came at ali" to Canada, the mother laments the loss of her heritage and her sense of self:
My husband is dead and me aione. None of my own family here to
comfoa me. No, There are my chiltiren- But 1often feel as if1 bore
strangers who have my eyes, my skh, my hair, but whose souls have been
stolen by invisible spirits. 1wonder, when 1am dead, if my children will
remember to honour me on Chiirgmiirg. (25)
The impending loss of continuity between generations is evident in this speech, and the loneliness of Mother's existence is striking. Her dead husband, the 'Linvisiblespirits," and use of the word Chingming aii contribute to the sentimentality of this scene and of the play in general, and reinforce a conservative view of culture, one that is fixed in the past.
Elien Quigley, in her work on Denise Chong's The Concubine's Children, notes that the
"sense of conhuity between generations and of an individual who is more than a siagular and isolated self is very much a part of the traditional sense of identity in Confucianisrn"
(240). Without her language and her traditions, Mother's children are strangers.
Nostaigia is conservative in nature, and therefore difficult to reconciie with resistance. As Susan Bennett writes,
[i]n fact, in aii of its manifestations, nostalgia is, in its praxis, conservative (in at
least two senses-its political alignment and its motive to keep things intact and
unchanged): it leans on an imagined and imaginary past which is more and better
than the present and for which the carrier of the nostalgia, in a defective and
diminished present, in some way or other longs. (5)
For Mother, the recovery of her fading heritage is found in the past, rather than in the present and future lives of her children. Upon her arriva1 in Canada in 1959, her sense of culture ceased to evolve; it has become locked into a time of "Mao's govemmeot" and the
"Red Army" (25). Mother's nostalgie lament for the past is fundamentdy cooservative, and not resistant to dominant cultural fom and practice because it resists change.
Qum's decision to depict the male child as deaf might be signincant, especidy in relation to Mother's cultural experience. Aithough not duectly mentioned in Mother
Tongue,the significance of the male heir in Chinese culture may be at work here. As
Quigley discovers in The Concubine's Children' 'iipon marriage a woman moves out of her mother's family and into her husband's. vaiidating her existence by giving birth to the male heir, who cmsecure the patrilineal inhentance" and the spintual weil-king of the dead ancestors (243). Mother' s uneasiness with her son's deafhess raises the question of
Steve's ability, in her mind, to live out his duties as a son as set out by Chinese culture.
Her responsibility to continue the family heis threatened, and so is her comection to her heritage.
The constant tension between Cantonese and ASL reflects the tension between
Mother and Steve and the clash of their respective worlds. Attempts to teach his mother the sign for the word "mother" have failed, but Steve nevertheless persists (19). His inner voice goes unheard by the other characters whiie he asks his mother to look at him when she talks (19). Later, Steve and his mother avoid each other's eyes as he ''hres her to look at him" (42). The subtext of the traditionai value of the son in the Chinese family again raises questions of shame. Mother's refusai to look at hirn may be linked to a lack of potential in Steve to carry out his role as a son. or perhaps to her guilt over his becoming deaf. Scene five reveals that the mother believes that her son's deafhess was brought about by the spirits of the dead Mother "didn't bum enough spirit rnoney" on
Chingming five years ago, and the spirits' revenge was to b~gevil upon her son (28).
Faith in tradition htersects with Steve's deafness, his culture, and Mother's guüt finthers
the rift between these two characters.
Just as Steve's gender seems to be signincant to his character, Mimi's gender is a
usehl point of discussion. Mimi, whose chosen language is English, attempts to act as the family's translator. As a translator, Mimi's gender seems to mark her as a betrayerr
she is the unfaithfiil woman, the weak link who is easily seduced by power, which in this case might be the globai authority of English. Like the bird in the story of the jingwei,
Mimi tries to fïü the chasm between her mother and her brother. Mimi, as daughter,
sister, or architect, "will build a bridge, a bridge that they cmwak across. That my
fdycan wak across" (45). Having an understanding of both Cantonese and ASL,
Mimi relays messages between the two other characters in the play and between the characters and the English speaking audience. As a translator of Mother's and Steve's language to the dominant English speaking audiencelculture, Mimi becomes a betrayer of their own culture. Although her literal translations seem to hifil their purpose, her attempt to bridge the gap, as set out by the story of thejingwei, between her mother's and
her brother's culture fails. Thejingwei and Mimi's attempt to build a ''bridge'' reinforces the binarism that Qum suggests with Mother Tongue;Quan uses Mimi as an intermediary between cultures, and implies that M'mi can utüfy Mother and Steve (45).
Tension also exists between English and Cantonese, pointing to the gap between
Mimi and her mother. M.ïmï suffers the Loss of her parents' hentage and is haunted by vague memories of it. At times, she seems pulied into her past; she pleads with her dead
55 father, who appears in the play as voicelover or in the shadows (6). to tell her the story of the jingwei once again (21). The memory of her father continues to foilow Mimi, and her
nightmm of his death seem linked to Chinese Ianguage because "sometimes when [she] dreams[s], [she] dream[s] in Chinese. Not the pidgin Chinese" she speaks to her mother, but "the fluent, flowing language mer] father used to cm as he walked with mer] hand in hand" (22-23). Mimi's Ioss of her mother tongue is further confirmed by her admission that she "can't write Chinese" (33)- Lien Chao asserts that "[tJhe ioss of Chinese language is broadly depicted ri ineseCanadian Lterature] as a painfui but helpless and almost unavoidable expenence by the writers who were born as second and third generations in Canada" (16 1). As Qum herseif writes:
Like the novelist Sky Lee (whom, unfortunately, 1have never met), 1 am unable to
write or read Chinese, and 1speak some rudimentary Cantonese. It is indeed a
persona1 "loss" not to possess my "Mother Tongue," hence the title and my desire
to explore the dichotomies of Ianguage and culture in this play. (Qum "Mothei')
As Qum's fictional counterpart, Mimi attempts to regain a voice; her desire to continue her education indicates that she is not content to live in the same silence as her mother, and also her pnviiege as a mother tongue speaker of English.
Mimi's search for her own voice, her own identity, is compounded by her comection to her mother and her mother' s displacement. Although on the one hand, she iives in the present in Vancouver, Mother also lives in the past in China; her connection to tradition seems to be a source of turmoil for Mimi. For example, when her mother celebrates Chingming, Mimi thinks that the incense is a part of the Moon Festival. Mimi insists that she has not forgotten Chingming, but that she gets the traditions "confused" (30). Moreover, her mother must remind her to "pay tribute to [her] patemal grandfatber and grandmother;" she "shouid've done that when [she] first came in" (36). Mimi is stiii comected to these traditions, though, because she recds thatjai is "Buddha's Feast" and agrees to cook jai for her mother "one day" (32). That her sense of identity is Iinked to her hentage weighs heavily on Mimi's subconscious, as hgments from her own past, and the past of her mother, float through her mind, surfacing in dreams and flashes of memory.
The relationship between Mimi and Steve is aiso a source of tension, and is complicated by Steve's deafness and Mimi's desire to leave home. In the dream sequence in scene four, Mimi reveals her feeling of guilt surrounding her brother's deafness. Explaining the hand rnovement for the word "sorry" in sign language, Mimi makes an unspoken co~ectionbetween her actions (or inaction) and Steve's deafness
(26). The short scene has the feehg of a recurring dream-a brief exchange that has replayed in Mimi's mind countless times since the events took place. So heavy is her guilt, the voices of cLSTEVEand MOTHER repeat their separate languages as MIMI is dn'ven under the weight of their wordr" (27). The memory is too paùiful, and the dream ends. Moreover, Steve expresses his disapproval of Mimi's decision to move to
Kingston. Aithough he tries to manipulate Mimi with fear and guilt, Steve's reai concem seems to be that if Mimi leaves home, there will be no translater, and he will be alone,
Since he currently relies on Mimi for communication with his mother, if she leaves, it means that he must take on this responsibility for himself.
Steve's implication that Mimi's presence moderates the tension between him and his mother is unfounded because the conflict with his mother occurs despite Mimi's intervention. For example, Steve is '"rightthere" when Mother asks Mimi to ask Steve if he wants more food while the famiiy eats dinner in fiont of the television (18). The television provides distraction, and emphasizes the family's contentment with the status quo; the mother says that it is "tao late now" for her to learn sign language, and she ignores Mimi's insistence that she must "leam English one day" (18). Since the family is likely watching Engiïsh language programmes (probably produced in the United States), the act of watching teIevision, which Wideload in Fronteras Amerkanus cails "me
Global Viilage Idiot Box" (52), symboiizes their participation in andor consent to one of the many ways that English functions monologicaUy. Moreover, Mother's refusal to adopt another language in order to commuaicate with her son goes beyond stubbomness.
Making room for anther language, the language of her son, would mean that Mother would have to accept that her child is a stranger and does not share her experience. With or without Mimi's physical presence in the home, Mother and Steve WU always be at odds, and unable to communicate in any significant way.
Quan's decision to include Cantonese and ASL in the performing of Mother
Tongue and to script the play in Engiish has its own cultural context, Chao argues that
"adopting English as the ianguage of writing becomes a political task for aU Asian
Canadian writers" (148). English is chosen, she suggests, because of "'the need to communicate. .. . ~ontinuous enclosure in Chinese means a seif-imposed and prolonged silence and isolation within Canadian culture" (148). So accessibility is one important consideration in the decision of choosing a language, but at the same time there is the risk of flattening difference. Since to understand literal meanhg is not the same as to understand "the Living utterance," as Bakhtin points out, then one must be carefid in making the assumption that communication can necessarily be equated with understanding (277). PracticaIiy speaking, the reason for M~herTongue's predominantly Engiish script may simply be that Qum, Wre Mimi and Sky Lee, is not literate in Chinese. Chao points out that "for many native-bom Chinese Canadians,
English is, ironicaily, the only written language that they possess" (148). Furthermore,
Ng concludes that because "it remaïm undeniable that the Chinese Canadian experience is written in a nonChinese language. ,. ,aU Chinese Canadian wrïting is inevitably hybrid, but in different degrees" (174).
Untranslated Cantonese in performance reflects a refusal to make understandable certain aspects of Chinese culture. Although the majority of the play's text is Wfitten in
English, certain words are left untranslated: jingwei (l3,2O, etc), jai (32), bi-sin (36),and loong (44). Why these particular words are in Cantonese is unexpiained, but the notion that some words are simply "untranslatable" raises the question of exactly wfiich words are and which ones are not. As discussed in chapter one with respect to Addoforata, translation with any language is problematic because there exist so many cultural and intertextual variables that are exceedingly difficult to translate into another cuIturai context. In this regard, evocation of a single word such as "Jar''or "Chingming" can represent the possibilities of many variables, signal difference, and resist the monologicd authority of English.
Ng wonders if the use of untranslated terms might %e read as a new strategy of exoticizing the Chinese culture*' (18 1)- Moreover, she maintains that the "use of untranslated words is a double edged sword" because "the cultural references of these terms can only have meaning for someone who knows the culture and various languages, which is not the case for aii readers'* (18 1). Simple explanations of rich, memorialued
traditions (for example, preparingjai "%O remember that Buddha did not eat meat" (36))
simplify complex meaning, and in doing so, erase generations of cultural rnemory. Such
expianations seem to defeat the purpose of including untranslated language that might
othemise serve as a marker of resistance in Mother Tongue-
Mimi acts as moderator, and the English langage acts as the comrnon ground on
which Mother and Steve meet, which mererodes the subversive element of minority
language at work in this play. Both characters speak some English; both have accents;
Mother speaks with a "Chinese accent (but not pidgin English)" (6) while Steve speaks
"as a deaf person wouid" (16,37). Each accent illustrates the characters' uneasiness in
English speaking culture, the dominant culture, and identifies them with their rninority language. At the same time that it Uustrates the characters' submissiveness to the authority of English, it also indicates a lack of a total surrender of ciifference- Mimi's in- between position dows her to translate for the characters, and likewise for the audience by responding to Steve or Mother in English, In this way, Mimi, as a representative of the English language, becomes an agent of colonization in that she appears to assume control of Mother' s and Steve' s language and cultural identity on behaif of an English speaking majority culture. In this context, she is linked to the female subject who is seduced by the colonial der, gives birth to "muted" off-spring, and in the process betrays her own people.
Mimi's role as translater in the Chan family is problematic for several reasons, but most significantiy in this discussion because it undermines the resistant power of the multi-voicedness of the play. Her lack of experience in both Chinese and deaf cuinires makes the accumcy of her translation suspect. Like a coloniser, Mimi cleariy has a bias
in dealing with Mother and Steve, For instance, Mimî is selective in her translation of
Steve's fnstration with Mother, and ouiy translates the '?eu us a story" portion of his
plea for Mother to look at him (19). Furthemore, since both Mother and Steve
disapprove of her going away to school, Mimi manipulates her translations in her own
favour. She seems to take advaotage of her Mother's poor English: "MOTNER doesn 't
understand most of what Mimi is saying, but MlMI look happy, so MOTHER is happy for he?' (33). Mimi telis her mother that Queen's is not so far because it is "a thme hour ciifference" but "m~rnbles'~that it is a difference in rime zone, not in travel distance (33). The metaphc with ethnicity. Mother and Steve are not oniy complicit in Mimi's (and the Engiish language's) authority in their lives, but they encourage it Their use of their own language fails to achieve a genuine feeling of resistance because they have not overcome what amounts to internai colonization- Steve Pile, building on Fanon's notion of overcoming resistance fiom within before achieving resistance on a societal level, argues that "in order to achieve progress, it may be necessary to conquer other people's resistances" (24). Mother Tongue does not give any indication of such a movement forward, and Mother and Steve need to move beyond their preoccupations with the past before they can do so.
Moreover, the characters have an "inner voice" and corresponding lighting colour associated with them in performance, lenduig a sense of authenticity to their identities.
Mother's inner voice speaks in Cantonese, but is repeated in English; her light is "like smoking red incense" (24). The colour red links her to her pst, her home country, where she waited every night "for someone to corne and in the name of the Red Arrny take away everything" and the buming of incense expresses her cornmitment to cacrying out her religious customs (25). Just as Mother's iight seems to take her back to an earlier time, so too does Steve's- His inner light is blue Iike the water in which he feels drowned and
siienced, perhaps a reference to the amniotic fluid of his mother's womb that simultaneousïy nourishes and protects him fiom the outside world. When he speaks in this light, his "accent" disappears, and he speaks without the stage direction of "as a deaf person would" (17,25). His impaired speech serves to brand him as an "authentic" deaf speaker, a representative of de& culture- Mimi's inner iight is 6Cdreamlike'yand corresponds with her guilt-ridden dreams of the death of her father and Steve's mess
(22'26). The mysticism of Mimi's dream-me lighting and its comection to the past also create a sense of authenticity. The iighting techniques and the notion of an "inner voice" signal to the spectator the characters' differences and their respective authority in that position.
Within the Chan family, one character is not pitted so much against the other, but each character is in conflict with her or himseif as weli as the other two family members.
Bennett Lee claims that ccethnicminonty writers have an experience of at ieast two cultures" and consequently ''the friction between the two worlds and the powerhl influence of the secondary culture Iurking offstage account for what is fresh and energetic and unique about much of this iiterature" (7). Mother Tongue rejects the "two world" dichotomy with its insistence on a "sea of voices," a dialogical space where various languages, both unitary and individual, corne up against one another. In these moments,
Mother Tongue resists the monological authority of the English language, and asserts heteroglossia in a way that aiiows Cantonese, Arnerican Sign Language, and English to be heard on their own te-- However, Mimi's position as an agent of colouizatlon in her
translater role counteracts this resistance to the authority of English since her translations
erase the ciifferences set out by Mother Tongue's heteroglossia. Furthemore, the play's
static view of ethnicity, a vïew that relies heavily on the pst, also serves to erase
difference and undennine the resistance that seems to be sought after through Quan's "sea of voices" metaphor (13).
Mother Tongue's ambiguous closing scene seems to indicate that cultural borders cmbe transcended. Mother's movement into Steve's blue Light, the light of his inner voice, suggests that Mother can somehow enter Steve's world. Her offering of an orange, which is a traditional offe~gof her Chinese herïtage, mersignifies her attempt to win over her son, to overcome his difference. In the following chapter's discussion of
Fronterus Amen'cunas, 1will explore the ways in which Verdecchia suggests that cultural borders can be dialogical, and that language can be a borderland rather than a bridge. Chapter Three: Guiuermo Verdecchia's Fronteras Arnericrmas
It is Verdecchia's discovery of the possibility of language as a borderland and the
irnpossibility of originary or "authentic" cultures that sets Verdecchia and Fronteras
Americanas (Anerican Borders) apart fimm the other plays discussed in this thesis.
Fronteras Arnericams is a one-person show wrÏtten and performed from the seemingiy
autobiographicd point of view of an Argentinian Canadian. It is in many ways a very
intimate story. At the same time. however, its message to cd"off the Border Patroi"
(77) seems undeniably politicai, and steadfastly aimed at its spectators. Throughout the play, Verdecchia's use of Spanish also seems politicai; it appears to be used for the
purpose of subverting North American stereotypes of Latino culture. Verdecchia's use of
rninority Ianguages in Fronteras Amen'canas (Spanish and French) asserts difference, and thereby resists assimilation by the dominant culture. However, this kind of resistance, as discussed with respect to Addolorata and Mother Tongue, can also be seen to reinscribe othemess and begin the cycle of bbothering"once again. In this chapter. 1will argue that while Fronteras Americanas uses nlinority languages in a fashion similar to those of
Addolorata and Mother Tongue, at times, Verdecchia manages to escape the "us/them" binary of ethnicity-a feat that neither Micone nor Quan seems to undertake successfdiy.
Verdecchia's monologue concludes with an alternative view of language that neither
Addûlorata nor Mother Tongue envisions, In Fronteras Americanas, the border is not simply a boundary or a bridge between languages or between cultures; the luiguistic border zone is a didogical space wherein languages, cultures, and individuals corne together. Verdecchia's Governor Generai's (1993), Chahers' (1994), and Dora Mavor
Moore @est performance, 1993) award-winning play, which premiered at Toronto's
Tarragon Theatre in 1993, is as entertaining as it is weli written. As seems tme with bis other works (such as The Terrible But Incornplete Journais of John D.; A Line in the
Sand, with Marcus YousseE, The Noam Chomsky Lectures and Insomnia, with Daniel
Brooks), Verdecchia appears determined in Fronteras to unsettle his audiences' understanding of the world around them and to thus challenge the status quo. This one performer/two character play draws the spectator's attention to the construction and deconstruction of Latino stereotypes through the character Wideload, who "espeak[s]"
(40) in the over-the-top Latino accent typically perpetuated by US teievision and "de movies" (47).
Between Wideload's deconstmctions, verdecchiaU addresses the complexities of a Canadian immigrant's life caught between "two countries and two mernories" (21). Not certain when, why, or how he becarne this way, Verdecchia confesses that he has '%en lost for quite some time now" (27). He plans to travel to the country of his birth,
Argentins, insistïng that the trip means he is "Going Home" and tbat "ail wïil be resolved, dissolved, revealed" when he reaches his destination (36)- That Verdecchia fdsto find such resolution is no surprise-his Fodor's guide, carnera, and travel sickness give him away as a tourist. B is only upon renirning to Toronto, after his meeting with TIBrujoy',
- "since the character, playwright, and actor (in al1 professional productions of the show to date) are ail named "Verdecchia," it is difficult to make the usud distinctions between roles, The autobiographical nature of the story also complicates matters considerably. Throughout this chapter, L have used the narne Verdecchia to refer chiefly to the character in the play, but 1think there is room for interpretation here, The times when 1specificaiiy refer to the playWrightas a playwright are so indicated within my text, at Bloor and ~adison,~that Verdecchia cornes to ternis with his "border wound" (70).
Wideload's dialogue often jumps back and forth between his accented English and Spanish. Wideload is ofien expiïcit in his attempt to alienate non-Spanish speakersz4 by speaking in Spanish ancüor accented English to make them re-examine the bases of their own prejudices. Wideload, who makes his first appearance in a "bandito outfit" accompanied by the sound of gunshots, speaks his very fint words to the audience in
Spanish (22). Moreover, these words ask the 'c~atinoamericanos"to raise their hands in order to identw themseives (22). Irnmediately, non-Spanish speakers in the audience are left out not only because they cannot understand, but dso because they are not a part of the exchange of information that takes place when only certain audience members raise their hands. Although non-Spanish speaking spectators may be able to understand some of Wideload's Spanish because they recognize certain words or roots of words that are common to English (such as "latino" and "identify7in the phrase "los latinos se pueden identificar?"), spectators are nonetheless subject to Wideload's categorization (22).
Wideload most certainly divides bis audience into two definite groups: "Entonces el resto son, . . gringos. Lo siguiente es para los gruigos" (22). Clearly, this creates some sense of alienation among audience members who are not included. What is not clear is how much of the subsequent show is specifjically for the gringos. It seems as though the rest of the performance is directed toward this portion of the audience because Wideload
Signifcantly, Bloor and Madison in Toronto signifies a culturalIy diverse area, whereas much of the rest of the city seems to be divided into sbcaüed "ethnie neighbourboods-"
24 My use of the phrase "non-Spanish speaking" to desccîbe particular spectators who cannot understand Wideload's (or Verdecchia's) Spanish is as problematic as Wideload's "Saxon" label because it neglects to take into account the complexities of Imguage (e.g, cultures, dialects, regionalisms, connotations etc.), communication, and translation. Therefore, "non-Spanish speaking" requîres a broad interpretation and an awareness of these variables. continually uses phrases such as 'you people" (25) and 'lou Saxons" (39) when referring to the audience. However, he is carefd to point out that "not everybody paid sixteen dollars" to see the show; his '%ends get in ike" (53). Again, this serves to alienate spectators and to merdivide them; the binary of ushem or latinoamericanos/gringos becomes f?ïends/strangers-
Wideload's resistance to "de Saxoaian community" (40)is greater than merely turnùig the tables on his audience. The stage of Tarragon is Engiish CanadÎan.
"Saxonian," and languages other than Engiish are rarely, if ever, spoken by actors on stage there. As culturaily diverse and open-minded as the Toronto audience might be on any given night, English is the common ground. Aithough the way in which the languages of the theatre itself are employed Vary considerably fkom show to show
(costume, set, iighting, sound, video, and even the physical movements of the actors thernselves), the role of English is clear. In seizing the literal space of the stage and speaking his native language, WideIoad negotiates room for hirnself and his culture within the much larger metaphorical "space" of the dominant culture. In resisting assimilation into this culture, Wideload's Spaaish accomplishes more than simply fnistrating some members of his audience* The Spanish rnixed into Wideload's dialogue is another example of code-switching, which Gumperz argues represents an attempt "to communicate metaphonc information about how they [people who are engaged in code- switching] intend their words to be understood" (61). That is to Say, by referring to another language, one refers to a whole other discourse, another set of social. political, and economic realities. In doing so, Wideload demonstrates a kind of resistant tactic; he subverts the dominant culture by imposing hîs own context on the non-Spanish speaking spectator- Any spectator who has no knowledge, no erperience, ofhérica cannot understand Wideload's references to "'de barrio" (24) despite hermis lïteral understanding of the word as "heighbourhood." Without a shared heof reference or a comprehension of the signined, words such as "bm*oY7or in Addoloratu "'villaggio" cannot be Myunderstood. and are perhaps even misunderstood. For English speakers, barrio might call to mind barriers, blockades, and even Street riots- In contrast, Micone' s viuaggio seems a softer word, with connotations of the pastoral, the idyllic country village.
Wideload does not speak in Standard English, but rather an accented "english" for most of the The strength of Wideload's accent varies, but his voice is constantly contrasted to Verdecchia's clearly pronounced Standard English (much like
Mimi in Mother Tongue) throughout the play's quickly paced sections or scenes. In his opening Bandito speech in which Wideload identifies himseif, tongue in cheek, as part of
"authentic Mejico," as genuine as "de real mezcal wit de reai worm in it" (23), his accent is at its thickest. The sharpness of Wideload's speech is heightened by contrast with the precedhg scene' s opening speech given by the carefully articulate, English speaking
Verdecchia As the play progresses, the jou's become you's, and the accent's intensity fades, if only slightly. Regardless, the resonances with sit-corn MeKifans are unmistalcable when Wideload opens his mouth on stage, and unWEe in Mother Tongue, his accent is inscribed in the script of the play. As a result, even Wideload's english operates in ways that are resistant to the dominant English culture. His pronunciation of
21 AS Ashscroft et al point out, "We need to distinguish behveen what is proposed as a standard code. English (the language of the erstwhile centre), and the linguistic code, english, which has kentransformeci and subverted into several distinct varieaes throughout the world" (8). 1think Ashcroft et al's distinction "'de" instead of "the" and ''j0u9*instead of 6'you'*is another tactic of resistance wherein he does not have to step outside of the metaphoncal space of the North American, Saxonian community Using 'English" for his own purposes. and in the process creating his unique brand of "english" with his accent*Wideload violates the mies of standard English, which, as discussed in chapter two. represents past British colonial deand the rising power of the (corporate) United States. Verdecchia, on the other hand, seems to confîrm this authonty, English is the language of his workplace ("the Business"), the Ianguage of the 'W movie" (63). Like Mimi in Motlier Tongue and Johnny in Addolurata,
Verdecchia's ability to speak EngLish is crucial to hîs success in the working world-
Furthemore, the character Verdecchia also uses untranslated words in ways that seem to employ tactics to act out resistance within a space shared with the AngloSaxon culture. Since to function in another language is reaiiy to function in another register, another discourse, bilinguals such as Verdecchia have a unique advantage over monolinguals. As Gumpen asserts, bilinguals are "aware that their own mode of behaviour is only one of several possible modes, that style of communication affects the interpretation of what a speaker intends to cornmunicate" (65). In choosing not to surrender completely to English (the language of the dominant culhue in this context),
Verdecchia seems to refuse communication with non-Spanish speaking spectators. One example of this fkom the published text is the dedication "Para mis padres, Elvira y
Rafael." Also in the published text, the preface, written by the playwright himself, code- switches to Spanish to explain that his work is one in progress: ''Fronteras Americanas is part of a process, part of a much larger attempt to understand and to invent. As such, it is between 'English" and "english" works well in reference to Wideload's speech-
69 provisional, atado con alambre"(lî), or "tied with ire-"^^ Wbat is signincant about these
few Spanish words is their placement in the text- Together, the dedication and the
preface provide a context and set the tone for the play that foilows. Intended or not, the presence of these words on the page signals difference, ccothemess," and an unwillingness to translate. Moreover, Gumperz maintains that in conversational code-switching, the
Lcethnicai.iyspecific, minority language" becomes the "we" code, while the rnajority language becomes the "they" code (66). This Wthem spiit reinfiorces the divide between minority and major@ cultures, and undennines Verdecchia7squest to hda place in which he feels at home. On the other hand, the subtle insertion of Spanish into the first few pages of the text might also be read as an attempt to break fiee of the we/they or ushem binary. From the perspective of Bakhtin's "living utterance" concept, even a single word can signify multiple co~otations,each with its own cultural associations and references (277).
Furthemore, Verdecchia interpolates untransiated Spanish into the dialogue of the play itself. For exarnple, when Verdecchia explains the history of the tango, he points out that despite its popularity outside of Spain, the tango has never been "entirely dornesticated. It is impossible to shop or aerobicize to tango . . .porque el tango es un sentimiento que se baila" (58). The reason why the tango bas not ken My cornmercialized is therefore left a mystery for the non-Spanish speaking spectator.
Seemingly, the tango has not ken domesticated for the same reason that Verdecchia has chosen to explain himself in Spanish; his refusal to translate, that is, to simplifv and to erase difference, is clear in this instance- Similarly, Verdecchia's quotation of Federico
26 This translation cornes from dittp~habelfish.altavistacomlc~-bin/tranS1ate?>.
70 Garcia Lorca's poetry (66-7) is not translated Since most poetry is so highly engaged
with figurative language and symbolîc meaning, Verdecchia's refusal to provide a
translation for these lines is understandable; there is too much at stake without a culturai
context. In Mother Tongue, Mimi jeopardizes herself (as betrayer) and her culture (as
family) when she engages in translation- Considering that a refusai to translate is to resist
the language and culture of what Brisset caiis the "target miLieu" (4), where is the Iine
drawn between what can or cannot (or what shodd and shouId not) be translated?
To answer this question. it is useful to explore the moments when Verdecchia
does provide sorne kind of translation for several of the Spanish words and phrases he
uses. The refusal to translate as outlined above is conspicuously absent at certain
moments in the play when Verdecchia provides quick and simple translations,
translations that nonetheless erase the histories, mernories, and experiences of a culture.
The most obvious example of direct translation is the title of the play itseif, which is
translated in parenthesis on the front cover of the publîshed text. Even as the audience fust enters the theatre, a slide projects an English translation "Fronteras. Borders.
Americanas. American" (19). Yet Verdecchia himself points out the inadequacy of this simple translation: "And when 1Say AMERICA 1 don't mean the country, 1mean the continent" (20). Mayte G6mez elaborates on the distinction between the English and
Spanish use of "America." Whïie "America" in the United States and Canada is often identified solely with English speaking culture, "the word 'America' also exists in the
Spanish Ianguage (in fact, it is a Latin word) chaiienging the notion of America as an
Anglophone culture" (35, also see footnote 16'38-9). Once again, the cultural context of language is essential, and translation fails to communicate the intended meaning to non- Spanish speakïng spectators. This failure, however, might be off set by what can be gained by an English speaking spectator's misinterpretation of 'Tronteras Americanas."
As Jemifer Harvie and Richard Paul Knowles point out, '%onteras" is a kind of a
"bilinguai pun," through which Verdecchia refers to "anew fiontief' (151). While missing out on the complexities of "Fronteras Americanas" as resisting Anglo-cenaism as G6mez argues, non-Spanish speaking spectators achieve insight into Verdecchia's mode1 of the border as a possible home, as adiaiogical space, and a new fiontier.
Moreover, Verdecchia notes that his hotel is '"Iocated on one of the main streets in
Santiago on Huérfanos at Huérfanos 578 (Huérfanoç-Spanish for orphans)" (38). The parentheticai translation and the repetition of the Spanish word "Huérfanos" (which happens twice more) seems to mark this information as important Verdecchia seems determined that the spectator knows that "huérfanos" is the same as "orphansl'
Verdecchia's decision to choose fkom his Fodor's Guide a hotel on a Street called
"'orphans" is Iikely indicative of his sense of being lost, but regardless of any symboiic meaning, the ease of translation is signifïcant on its own. Clearly, "huérfanos" in Chile does not signify the same as "orphans" in Toronto, but Verdecchia's translation of the word implies just that. Verdecchia at other points seems aware of this gap to some degree, such as his story of what happens when he and Aiberto stop to deal with a flat tire: 'We stop at a gomeria a word which traaslated literally would be a "mbbery,' it's a place where they fix tires" (49). Verdecchia's recognition of the inadequacies of iiteral translations in this instance is indicative of his previously discussed refusa1 to translate.
In the moments when Verdecchia tries to act as translater for the non-Spanish speaking spectator, he ultimately fails to achieve resistance because he fails into the uslthem trap by trying to act as a bridge between cultures rather than living on the border
as he comes to accompiish by the end of the play. Given that the insertion of a single
word or phrase hmanother language cmsignify so much more than its iiteral rneaning
(as has ken previously discussed with respect to "viliaggio" in chapter one and L'barrio" in this chapter), Verdecchia's off-hand translations in the above mentioned moments, relayed to the spectator almost as after-thou-, serve to nullify the signilicance and history of the words themselves. "EIuérfanos" and "gomeria" become digestible to the non-Spanish speaking audience, and any potential for resistance to the dominant Engiish speaking culture seems unlikely.
Converseiy, when Verdecchia code-switches into French, once in the beginning and again toward the end of the play, no translations are provided. In the section tided '?t
Starts," Verdecchia hies to recuperate "the moment that [he] fkst discovered ne] was lost" (27). He says that moment rnight have been when he was in Paris: 'Zn France, où mes étudiants me disaient que je parlais le fiançais comme une vache Catalan. En France où j'étais étranger, un anglais, un Argentin-Canadien, un faux touriste'" (28). Verdecchia is mistaken for a Catalan, someone from Catalonia, a north east region of Spain that borders southern France. This recognition of a European origin sets him apart fiom, Say, a Mexican of aboriginal descent and thus categorizes him as "white." Verdecchia's apparent fluency in French is significant in that it iilustrates his charneleon-like abiiity to adapt (although not ever My)to the culture around him; a skiil he wouId have learned well in his experience as a ktgeneration immigrant in a bilingual country. Although he was different, Verdecchia 'Tek almost at home" in France (28), and perhaps this is because he feels "at home" with the French language. Considering that French seems to si- this contradiction in Verdecchia's Me, it is not surprising that his moment of reaiization is articulated, in part, in French. As he remembers the words of El Brujo, the pieces begin to corne together in his mind:
I'm not in Canada; I'm not in Argentina.
I'm on the Border-
1 am Home.
Mais zooot alors, je comprends maintenant, mais oui. merde! le suis Argentin-
Canadian! F am a pst-Porteno neo-Latino Canadian! 1am the Pan American
highway! (74)
French is not accidental or incidental in this speech; rather' it is integral to understanding just how Verdecchia feels at home "on the Border." Ghezargues that Fronteras
Americanas is ultimately subversive of the Canadian policy of multiculturalism because it advocates "interaction among iiving, practised cultures" and not "static, unchanging cultures, living side by side without touching one anothei' (36). It makes sense that even though he was b'undocurnented,extralegd, marginal" (28), Verdecchia felt at home in
France; for him, for anyone, identity is not stable or static, and neither are borders.
Identity's illusion of fwty was what caused Verdecchia's "border wound" in the first place (70). The untranslated French in Fronteras seems directly connected to
Verdecchia's attempt to resist a culture of which he is undeniably a part.
Nonetheless, the potential for a political statement through code-switching in
Fronteras Americanus is particdarly powerful when combined with the use of Wideload, and the stereotype of the Latin lover. Wideload proposes to know why it is that
"whenever a Latin and a Saxon have sex it is going to be a mhd-expanding and cuiîmaiiy enriching experience," and is content to reveal this secret. However, as he does so, he trds off in Spanish: "porque nosotros sabemos hacer cosas que ni se imaginaron en la
Kama Suira, porque nosotros tenemos un ritmo, un cdor un sabor un tumbao de timbales de conga de candomble de kilombo. Una onda, un un dos tres, un dos" (41). Once again, he leaves non-Spanish speakhg spectators out of the loop. By mentioning the Km
Sutra, Wideload seerns to tease the Saxons; they know Wideload is referring to sex, but they casmot understaad the specifics. A translation is avaiIable to the non-Spanish speaker, but they have to work for it: 'Yor dose of you who want a translation of dat come and see me after de show or ask one of de eSpanish speakers in de audience at intermission" (41). The implication here seems to be that translations are not easy to come by, and must be mediated by some sort of "authentic" representative of the given culture. At the same tirne, though, Wideload's invitation seems dubious; considering his insistence that Latinos are in fact better lovers, his invitation backstage seems to be a kind of sexual advance. G6mez argues that the Latino stereotypes are in fact reinscribed by
Wideload (Verdecchia) when he seems to support the notion of the great Latin lover; the udthem binary is merely "redrawn, with the Latinos occupying the siibject position (that of the sexier lovers), whiIe at the same time adding more weight to the Latino stereotype created by Angio-Saxons in the htplace" (34). A similar comment can be made with respect to Wideload's Spanish explanation; the mystery of bis words heightens the non-
Spanish speakuig spectator's image of the "other" as exotic and sexuaily desirable.
G6mez provides a translation for the passage, suggesùng that Wideload infers that
"the Latinos' 'rhythm' and 'heat' are essential attributes which make them better lovers"
(34). However, in her footnote translation, only about half of the Spanish is translated; she clairns that the "rest is untranslatable, as it refers to different musical rhyihms of the
American continent" (footnote 13,38, my emphasis). Her implied point that without cultural context, translation is at best difncult, and at worst. impossible. is well taken.
Given her criticism of VerdecchialWideload for what amounts to perpetuating Latinos' status as other, Gomez's claim that the "different musical rhythms" are untranslaable is problematic because although it preserves the inte- of the Latino Ianguage and experience, it also serves to exoticize Latino culture by guarding the Latin lover secret once more. Like poetry, highly contextual words such as those describing musical rhythm are translatable, perhaps not very effectively, but translatable nonetheless. To suggest otherwise is reaiiy just to "redraw," as G6mez puts it, the uskhem binary.
It is by working through the doubIe bind of ethnicity and exoticism that
Verdecchia is able to corne to a celebration of hybridity in the end. Just as Wideload's attempt to resist stereotypes of the Latin lover and dï.rty Mexican seems to reinscribe them, so too does the use of untranslated minority language seem to reinforce otherness.
Graham Huggm argues that this double bind caxmot be avoided because ethnicity exists only in relation to a dominant culture. Huggan defends Michael Ondaatje against critics who claim that in Running in the Famlly he exploits his experience of othemess for the purposes of commercial success. Reasoning that "the ironies in Running in the Family are conspicuous, and that they denve from Ondaatje's sense of the impossibility of bis autobiographical task," Huggan asserts that "Ondaatje negotîates this double-bind [of ethnicity and exoticism] by striking a delicate balance: between the recuperative mythologies of ethnic biography and the pseudonostalgic longings of exoticist travel mernoir" (118-19). Ondaatje indeed seems aware of the impossibility of recuperating the past with qualincations such as "'probably" and "maybe" in hîs retehg of memory and
third person accounts. However, he simultaneously implies authenticity in his story
teliing, which is aided by a scaled map, table of contents, and photographs.
Fronteras Amencanas also has its share of self-reflexive moments that are
undennined by an assertion of authenticity As a one-person show with Verdecchia as the
wrïter and performer, Fronteras Americanas has a kiod of inherent claim to authenticity
that is not present in Addobrata or Mother Tongue- AM Wiison maintains that
Fronteras Americanas works as "atype of confession," but lacks the "%ourgeois individualism which characterizes much solo performance" (8). Instead, she argues that the performance 'tiews the individual as a social being and so emphasises individual identity as produced within the context of ideologies" (8). Although this context undermines the individuaiist character of a solo performance and its claims to authenticity that are based on Verdecchia's presence on stage alone, it creates another kind of authentification. The apparent reaiity of the social, economic, and political factors presented during the course of the play seem to add to the "'truth" of the story that the character cailed Verdecchia telis. Moreover, since this character shares his name with the playwright, the sense of authenticity is strengthened even more. The actor on stage ceases to be just an actor, and becomes a "reai" person with a history and will of his own despite the audience's awareness that they are in fact watching a scripted performance in a theatre.
In the pubiished text, Verdecchia's preface reveals yet another indication of the truth-claims of the play. He begios by wrïting that "Fronteros Americunas began as a long letter to a closefiend that 1wrote during a trip to Argentins in 1989" (13 my emphasis). Presumably, a Ietter to a close fiend carries more weight as a representation of genuine experience. than, for example. a Ietter to a smgeror a claim that the story came fiom the playwright's imagination. Verdecchia's statement that he made a copy of said Ieiter "forsome mysterious reason" seems to vouch for the play's authenticity; it was not human will that preserved the letter, but some unknown force of fate (13).
In the course of the performance, the spectator is invited to share Verdecchia's joumey back "home," and this shared experience acts as a kind of testunony to authenticity. The emphasis on '%e" in the opening sequence very much positions the audience as a part of the performance, and constructs it as homogeneou~uitea different view than is presented shortiy thereafter when Wideload suggests that the audience is made up of ''gringos" and "Iatiaoamencanos" (22). Verdecchia insists that the spectators accompmy him across the border, and remarks somewhat officiaily that
"beepers, cellular phones or fax machines" need to be disabled and watches need to be reset to "border tirne" (22). The instructions that the time is "Zero Hour" mersuggests that ali spectators are implicated in this long and involved trip; "zero houi' recalls the point of Germany's reconstruction following the end of the second world war in 1945 and constitutes an erasure of history-in this case, perhaps, the erasure of a history of hyphenated Canadians, of border wounds and wars. When the audience is instructed to reset their watches at the end of the play (presumably back to the real thne of "almost ten o'clock on a Friday night"), the joumey cornes to a close (77).
Throughout the play, there are several references to the play as a play, a scnpted performance, which appear to be an attempt to convince the audience of a certain level of authenticity. Verdecchia, after recountuig a painful childhood memory, seems to conhadict the conventions of the genre of solo performance, "I don? want to ta& about
myself all night" (33). Picking up on this cue, Wideload responds with
Thank Gd1 mean 1doan know about you but 1hate it when I go to el teatro to de
theatre and 1 am espectin" to see a play and instead 1just get some pyup dere
taiking about himseIf4eir life story-who cares? por favor-. .And whatever
happened to plays anyway-anybody remember plays? (33, ellipsis in original)
Drawing attention to Verdecchia (the pedormer) as the playwright, Wideload suggests that Verdecchia's role is £irst and foremost to entertain an audience, not to teil his Me story. This is reinforced by the section titled "EI Teatro," immediately preceding the end of the ktact. In this speech, Wideload expounds his theory of the theatre, questioning whether it is true that the value of theatre is that "a bunch of strangers corne together and share an experience'' (53). Verdecchia's attempt to 'Wear up any possible misimpression" by admitting that he is "something of an impostor" who confuses verb tenses in Spanish and cannot dance a tango, is akin to Ondaatje's self-reflexiveness as a writer (52). The apparent candidness of Verdecchia's comment lends believability to his story and to the play's message. Similady, Wideload reveais his own act; he says that he has %een a fumy guy" so that the audience wouid like him (76). If they have not aiready figured it out on their own, the spectaton are now aware that they have not wimessed the real Wideload-his performance was simply a performance.
It is through this ironic awareness of the pitfalIs of authenticity in Frontera
Arnericanas that Verdecchia negotiates his way around the double bind of ethnicity and exoticism. Recognizing the inescapabiiity of the trap of ethaicity, Verdecchia in the end no longer attempts to locate himself or his play outside of this smggle. Rather. with the help of El Brujo, he recogoizes his own responsibility to his experïence of othemess:
I remember an audition where 1was asked to betray and insdt everything 1
claim to believe in and 1remember that 1 did as I: was asked- -.-1 remember
my fear, 1 taste and smeii my fear, my fear of young men who speak
Spanish in the dadmess of the pack, and 1know in my traitorous heart 1
can't stand people 1 claim are my brothers. (72)
Ih comuig to terms with his rejection of his "brothers," Verdecchia shatteo the us/them binary. The target culture for this ''Cd to Amis" is no longer clear (54). Wntten on the cigarette package recovered !Ïom the body of a dead man in Chile are the words of
Octavio Paz, which are translated into English and projected on a slide: 'lam not at the crossroads:/to choosehs to go wrong" (74). Having discovered this message, Verdecchia reaiizes that his home is "on the Border" (74). In other words, his attempts to choose between the advice of El Brujo from Bloor and Madison and the therapist from Viema or between Spanish and English or between Argentins and Canada were in effect misguided.
His "home" does not exist on either side of the border, but in the borderland.
Ultimately, Wideload and Verdecchia together ask the audience to "consider" their own position. Since both "'characters" are scripted to speak simultaneously in the
"Consider" scene, Verdecchia the playwright confhns that the uslthem or colonised/coloniser formula no longer works. Both Wideload and Verdecchia challenge the audience to "[clonsider those corne fkom [sic] the many corners of the globe to build
Fort MacMurray, to Montreal, to Saint John's to build, to teach, to navigate ships, to weave, ta stay, ta remember, to dream" (77). Moreover, they ask the audience to consider their own parents, grandparents, themselves, but aiso to "[~Jonsiderthe border" (77). By drawing the spectator into the equation, Verdecchia once again acknowledges that we are
ali officers of the 'Border Patroi" and that in order to "go forward" (78), we must
surrender our badges. For Verdecchia, moving forward is to move "[t]owards the centre,
towards the border" (78). His enigmatic word play describes the border zone as a place that is neither margin nor centre, neither us nor them-not eitherlor, but both/and,
Such a space brings to mind Homi Bhabha's concepts of'third space" and
''hybridity? For Bhabha, "the importance of hybriity is not to be able to trace the original moments nom which the thUd emerges" but rather ''the 'third space' which enables other positions to emerge" (21 1). For Verdecchia, "two cultures, two memories" seem to define the border space, and are important only in that they ailow for the border to exist. No longer trying to uncover 'coriginary" Canadian and Argentinian cultures so that he cm choose between one or the other, Verdecchia finaiLy discovers that such purity does not exist shce cultures are always already c'ethnic" or hybrid.
Verdecchia's discussion of how "[s]ome things get across borders easier than others" is one example of this discovery (56). "Music," he says, "Music crosses borders"
(57). In tracing the various c'~ngins"of the instrument, Verdecchia explains how the bagpipes in the music from his grandfather's Gaiicia could possibly "ever end up in.. .
Scotland?" (57, eilipsis in original). By shattering the audience's iikely assumption that bagpipes are purely Scottish in origin, Verdecchia lays the groundwork for his later revelations regarding language. Lüce music, it seems, language dso crosses borders; in fact, it trmiscends borders. To put it more precisely, Verdecchia's clah that the border is more than just a boundary or a bridge, that it is his ''Home" (74), is integral to his view that language is always already hybrid- The recognition of this hybridized and ambivaient space is necessary before de
Certeau's concept of tactics can be brought to bear on Fronterccs Americanas. When
Verdecchia or Wideload communicate in language other than English, they impose their own system of references and metaphors onto the non-Spanish speaking spectator.
Furthemore, Verdecchia also circumvents the melyou split that typically arises nom a solo performance (a variation of the udthern binary previously discussed) . Verdecchia achieves this through presenting himseif within a pater social context, as Wilson argues, and also through his style of writing theatre. Fronteras Amencanas is more of a dialogue than a traditionai monologue, as Jennifer Harvie points out in her 1997 interview with
Verdecchia. In the interview, Verdecchia admits that both the slides and the audience act as his "partners in performance" (48).
He goes on to Say that he wrote Fronteras as a monologue because he felt it was his story to teil: "Fronteras was reaily my question. It was my thing. 'Where do 1 live?
Who am I?' Who else was going to answer that? It had to be me" (48). Despite
Verdecchia's insistence that bis play is about him, there is ample evidence in the script to suggest otherwise, as has been discussed in this chapter as weii as in articles by AM
Wilson and Mayte G6mez. Verdecchia accomplishes more than Micone or Qum in the sense that he not only resists the authority of the dominant culture's language, but he uncovers the myth of originary cultures. In negotiathg the double-bind of ethnicity through the use of mixed genre in Fronteras Americans, Verdecchia, as actor, writer, and character, concludes by suggesting that language is a border, and that the dialogical
%order zone" is as iiveable a space as any nation. Conclusion
The centrai aim of this thesis has been to explore the ways in which minority languages fûnction as tmls of resistance in Marco Micone's Addolorura, Betty Quan's
Morher Tongue, and Guillermo Verdecchia's Fronteras Americanas (American Borders)-
In close study of these three Canadian plays, the work of three different playwrights who mite out of three immigrant communities and experÏences. I have explored some of the complexities involved in theoruing resistance. As the stories of Addoforata, Morher
Tongue, and Fronteras Amencanas suggest, Canadian immigrants often experieuce un(der)-employment, discrimioation, and racism, and indeed have much to resist.
However, these plays also suggest that precisely who and what is resisted, as well as by whom, are necessarily complex issues. The extent to which these plays accomplish some degree of resistance varies considerably. Each play resists particular dominant ideologies at the sarne time as conforming to them. In the end, my analysis of the ways in which these plays succeed or fail in moving beyond this trap presents alternative ways of understanding resistance.
When it cornes to relationships between hwnan cultures, the division of power and the forces of resistance may seem quite indisputable in some instances, but are in fact subject to perspective. Lisa Law, in her chapter titled "Dancing on the bar: sex, money and the politics of third space," argues that what first may seem to be a clearly defined relationship between oppressor and victim in fact depends on one's point of view. In her study of Filipino females who work in Western-owned bars in the Philippines, she recognizes that the "prostitute identity fked within a rich-Watem-malelpoor-F'ilipina- female dichotomy" is usefd in that
this representation plays an Important role in highiighting the econornîc, political
and social bases of inequality, mut] it shuitaneously reinforces the
hegemonicaüy constructed identities of the "oppressor" and the "victim" through
naturaüzing them as hedidentities and subject positions. In dohg so, it offers
little room to maaeuvre, to negotiate identity or to resist the complex power
relationships constructed at points where class, race, and gender intersect. (107)
While it may be easy to point out that the Fipino dancers are victimized by the western male oppressors, it is perhaps less easy to see that they are in fact resisting a culture that forbids such things as western fashions and cosmetics,
Law asks "If everyday sites of stmggle occur in places of overlapping and intersechg forms of subjection, and if domination is never achieved without ambivalence [such as in her study], then how are we to envision power and resistance?"
(1 12). In her conclusion, Law writes that a reconceptualization of this space is needed, and she offers that Homi Bhabha's concept of third space suits this purpose (122). In this space, the space of the bar, "identities are negotiated and ambivalent, performed and not fixed" and it therefore becomes possible to break through the dichotomy of oppressor/victim (122). Sometimes confirming this binarism, other times refbting it,
Addolorata, Mother Tongue, and Fronteras Americanas have all addressed the question of how resistance might work, and how it is dependent upon power relationships and context-
In Addolorata, the contextuality of the play is crucial to understanding how minority Ianguages function resistantly. In order to establish how this resistance operates, it is necessary first to understand who or what that resistance is directed toward. The
power relationships at work in Addolorara are as complex as those of the community out
of which Micone writes. From one point of view, there is the strained relationship
between the Que'bécois and the rest of Canada, at the centre of which issues of language
and power continue to dominate. To Que'bécois sensibilities, the English language has
been a constant threat to Que'bécois identity and cuIturai survivai; it is aiso somewhat
metonymic of the threat of British imperiaiism, which stems in part from past events such
as the Conquest of Quebec in 1763. Within Quebec, immigrants also seem to have threatened Québécois culturai sovereignty. A decreasing population of supposed old- stock or pure laine Que'bécois combined with an increase in the number of immigrants has resulted in tension between ethnic communities and QueWcois, particularly with respect to the question of Quebec independence. Even Micone's counterparts in the Italo-
Queôécois community have questioned his involvement in the independence movement.
At the same the, however, Mo-Quewcois share the experience of being a minorïty, and therefore can sympathize with the Que'bécois oppression.
When it cornes to rninority language and resistance in Addolorata, the complexities of the various power relationships confuse the boundaries between oppressor and victim. In one regard, Micone's use of French in Aàdolorata allies the
Italo-Que'bécois community with French speaking culture, and in this way shares in the
Québécois stniggle for distinctness in an Anglo-dominated continent. Mer ail, the
French language is inextricably tied to QueWcois culture, and is the domulant language of Montreai (although there is a significant proportion of Anglophones and Ailophones) and Quebec. As Linda Gaboriau maintains, the use of the French language on stage, what she terms the "invisible character" of Quewcois theatre, has a political, communal effect on Québécois audiences, an effect that English does not have on English Canadian theatre audiences. However, Micone insists that the speech of his characters reflects the patterns and sensibilities of his community, and accordingly, such dialogue resists the rhetoric of a homogeneous Queoécos. At the same time that Addolorata confïrms the identity of the
Que%*cois by presenting their language on stage, the Italian re-interpretation of joual subverts the dominance of the culture, Likewise, the English and Italian inserted in words and phrases in the play contradict pure laine ideology, and r~flectthe culture of the
Italo-Queoécois, whose hybridity cannot be represented by a single language. While it may be useîùi to see Addolorata in terms of a French versus English dichotomy, doing so reinforces the construction of the us/them (or oppressor/victim) "through naturaiizing them as fixed identities and subject positions" (Law 107). The resistance of Adddorata works on different levels, and consequentiy, the target of this resistance is ambivalent; in one context, English speakuig culture appears to be resisted, but in another context, the
Québécois culture is resisted.
Furthermore, the English translation of Addoloratu also depends heavily on context Since the primary language of the characters is now Engiish, the non-standard,
Itaio-Que'bécois French is conspicuously absent and cmno longer act as a tool of resistance. Rather, the English stage directions. prologue, and dialogue of the characters detach the action of the play fiom its Italo-QuebéOcois(or even Queoécois) context. The complexities of the cultural relationships between these comrnwùties dissolve, and
Addolorata seems to become a play about Itaiian Canadians (Le. Italian immigrants outside of Quebec) facing an English language majority. Lost in the translation is the sense of ambiguity of oppression that cornes fiom the Italian commUIUlty in Montreal as a part of a minority (Quebec) facing a majority (Canada) that in turn is subject to the dominating forces of an even larger power (the United States).
Betty Quan's Mother Tongue pushes the Limits of ethnicity in her representation of two contrasting minority voices, which are mediated through a single English speaking character. Unlike the other two plays studied in this thesis, the minonty languages in
Mother Tongue are not represented in sinde words or phrases; rather, the majority of
Mother's and Steve's communication occurs in Cantonese and American Sign Langage respectively. Similarly, Mimi uses mostly English to express henelf, although she understands and uses bth Cantonese and ASL to some degree. The net effect is what
Qum calls a "sea of voices" or in Bakbtinian terms, heteroglossia. In this way, Mother
Tongue resists the authoritative role of the Engiish language in Canadian theatre.
Indeed, to tell a story of the Other (the minority, the ethnic group) through the language of colonization (the language of govemments, schools, and the media) is to reinscribe the power of the colonizer and its language to shape, reflect, and represent the rninority voice. Quan chooses to ailow Mother and Steve to speak in their own language, and the multi-voicedness of the play resists the authority of a hegemonic system of power that attempts to impose its authority with weapons such as language. Such a system constructs a conservative view of ethnicity, one that is static and only recoverable through the past-
Mother Tongue shows through the complexities of cultural and language relationships just how ambivalent the relationship between resistance and power can be.
For example, Mother feels so closely connected to Cantonese that to leam English or ASL threatens this comection. However, what she clings to is her conshuction of the past, her nostalgie, static view of a former time that represents stability and homogeneity to her. Faced with her strangers-for-children who do not undentand nor practice observances such as Chingming, Mother is isolated; her presence is dangerously close to her dead husband's, who oniy appears on stage "always in shadow" or as a "voice/over"
(6)-
On the other hand, Steve's comection to ASL seerns to have Iittie to do with nostalgia, and more to do with his present deaf5ess and his discomfort in the speaking world. Embarrassed by the sound of his speakîng voice, Steve avoids oral communicatim, which furthers his estrangement fkom Mother. Although ASL is indispensable to Steve, it is aiso a factor in his fnistration for it represents his lack of voice, physicaüy and metaphoricaiiy- As a visible minority, Steve is faced with the metaphoncal voicelessness or powerlessness associated with king Chinese Canadian.
His deafness means that he is iiteraüy voiceless within a dominant culture that is not only
English speaking, but hearing as weil. ASL provides Steve with a means of commuaicating with those around him, but at the same time it is an obstacle to fmding his own voice.
Just as Mother Tongue shows that the relationship between the minority and the minority Ianguage is complex, the play also shows how the Ianguage of the majority,
English, can undermine the play's potential for resistance. The thecharacters of the play each assert herhs own language, her/his own voice, and in this technique, Quan subverts the monologic authority often attributed to a unitary language on stage.
However, Mimi's position as farniiy translater betrays the resistance presented by Mother's and Steve's minonty voices. Mimi is the mediator, the bridge, between her
mother and brother and also between the audience and the performance, and English is
the language of that mediatioa. Like a kind of agent of colonization, Mùni controis the
communication of the household since she has the power to manipulate translations for
her own purposes; she betrays Mother's and Steve's agency, their abiiïty to speak for and
to be heard as themselves. Mimi is very much Like the Filipino prostitutes in Law's
study; she at once may be seen as selling herself to her metaphorical colonizer (Engiish speakhg culture) and helping her family and herself cope with their communication problerns. In the end, the resistant power of Mother Tongue's heteroglossia is ultimately undercut by the single, English speaking voice of Mimi, through whom the non-
Cantonese speaking or ASL fluent audience must receive the play.
Playwright GuUermo Verdecchia's use of minority languages in Fronteras
Amencanas incorporates tactics of resistance that mersuggest an opposition to a unitary language. Like Johnny/Giovarini in Addolorata, Verdecchia and his counterpart
Wideload code-switch into what 1 have called minorit. languages throughout the play. In
Fronteras Americanas, however, the minority languages are used more often, as weiI as in ways that directly address the issue of resistance and language. Wideload uses Spankh with purpose, and outwardly attempts to alienate those members of the audience who do not understand him. Perhaps more subtle in his approach, but nevertheless subversive,
Verdecchia, the playWright and the character, uses minonty Ianguages as tactics of resis tance. Inserting Spanish and French into his dialogue, Verdecchia transforms the space of the otber, the space of the Englishdominated Toronto stage, into a space that is mitigated by his own terms, announcing his presence and his diffe~ncewith spoken words,
Nonetheless, the resistance to single, domuiating language of English is not consistent since the relationships between us and them (or in Law's words, ccoppressor and victim") are unstable. For example, Verdecchia and Wideload at tirnes seem to translate themselves for the purposes of communicating an idea to their non-Spanish speaking or non-Latino spectators. Wideload challenges the Latin lover stereotypes, but in the same breath implies that the myth Ïs me. Moreover, Verdecchia complains of the
Latino stereotypes with which he is faced on television show auditions, but nonetheless reveals that he fears young men in the padc at night who speak Spanish.
Perhaps in answer to Lisa kiw's question of how to theorize power and resistance, Fronteras Amencanas asserts that the space of language is dialogicai.
Verdecchia, in his somewhat autobiographical monologue for two characters, findi himself in the space between "two countries, two mernories" (77),feeling homesick on his trip "home" to Argentha, betraying the people he calls his 'brothers" (72).
Verdecchia cornes to reaiize that the border is his home, and that the border ("la fkontera") is the here and now, "Bloor and Madison" (69)- This learning process is shared with the audience, made up of both gringos and latinoamericanos, who are invited to reset their watches, cdoff the Border Patrol, and lem"to live the borde?' (77). For
Verdecchia, the inter-linguistic space of the border zone is a habitable, dialogical space
(not a bridge or a dividing he) where cultures meet, exchange, and exist without mediation, translation, or compromise.
The dialogicai borderland of Fronteras AmencaBas is the type of third space that
Law concludes is the key to unlocking the binarism of oppressor/victim. Atthough Fronteras Americanas is the closest to achieving resistance through Ianpage in its suggestion of building a home on the border, A&lorutu and Mother Tongue are usefd in exploring the ways in which resistance is necessarily cornplex. AU of the plays discussed here offer various perspectives of how cultures meet, and what the implications of these meetings might be. Works Cited
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