散居的记忆

M. Coker
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引用次数: 0

摘要

接下来的文章是我对两个加勒比海裔女性(一个是虚构的,一个是真实的)的声音的解读,她们在应对某些创伤事件时,被迫面对她们对家庭的理解。我选择从这些特殊人物的角度来写作,因为他们的经历反映了我自己的一些经历。我父母的种族背景(以及我的出生地)是尼日利亚。我七岁那年来到加拿大,差不多是15年前。虽然我一生中大部分时间都住在加拿大,但我仍然在纠结我是否把它当作家。在很大程度上,这种不确定性是由我对各种基于身份的问题的经历以及围绕它们的话语所驱动的。例如,作为(被认为的)加拿大人对移民意味着什么,或者作为黑人对非洲人(尼日利亚人)意味着什么。诸如“你到底来自哪里?”总是提醒我,“外国”是我之前的一个假设。相反,耶稣诞生被认为是欧洲白人的功劳,这种做法系统性地边缘化了这段历史,并延续了对土著社区的暴力抹除,这种做法一直持续到今天。我不认为加拿大是我的原籍——这是许多加拿大人的共同看法——然而,那些有归属感的人与那些没有归属感的人有着截然不同的经历。我很幸运能在成长过程中不断学习和接触我的文化,但即使这样也有其局限性。有一种紧张,我称之为双面异化,这通常伴随着第一代移民,尤其是种族化背景的移民。对我来说,这意味着既不觉得自己是尼日利亚人,也不觉得自己是加拿大人,但却被这两个社会塑造和社会化了。这是我在上面提到的两个女人的故事中认识到并想要强调的一种紧张关系。此外,我的故事和他们的故事之间的连续性是通过我在作品中采用的记忆框架来表示的(即“我已经忘记/我记得”),这是我早些时候写的一首诗,是关于我自己的经历,在移居加拿大后,我的身份发生了一些变化。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
Memory in Diaspora
The pieces that follow are my interpretation of the voices of two women (one fictional, one real) of Caribbean descent who, in response to certain traumatic incidents, are forced to confront their understandings of home. I chose to write from the perspective of these particular characters because their experiences mirror some of my own. My parents’ ethnic background (and my birthplace) is Nigeria. I came to Canada the year I turned seven, almost 15 years ago. While I have lived in Canada for most of my life, I still grapple with whether or not I consider it home. For the most part, this uncertainty has been driven by my experiences with various identity-based questions and the discourses that surround them. For example, what it means to be (perceived) Canadian vs. an immigrant, or what it means to be black vs. African (Nigerian). Questions such as “Where are you really from?” always remind me that “foreign” is a presumption that precedes me. Conversely, nativity has been ascribed to the White European population in a way that systematically marginalizes the history and perpetuates the violent erasure of Indigenous communities, a practice that persists to this day. I do not consider Canada my place of origin—a sentiment shared by many Canadians—yet those with a perceived sense of belonging have vastly different experiences from those who do not. I am fortunate enough to have been raised learning about and continuously engaging with my culture, but even that has had its limits. There is a certain tension, what I would call a double-sided alienation, that often comes with being a first-generation immigrant, particularly of a racialized background. For me, that means not feeling either Nigerian or Canadian“enough,” yet being significantly shaped and socialized by both societies. This is a tension I recognized and wanted to highlight in the stories of the two women mentioned above. Moreover, the continuity between my story and (my representation of) their stories is signified by the framework of memory I adopted in the pieces (i.e., “I had forgotten/I remember”), which is from an earlier poem I wrote about my own experience coming to terms with some of the ways my identity changed after moving to Canada.
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