Alberta, Ch 28, 190: dehumanizing labor

1. Alberta, Ch 28, 190: dehumanizing labor “city of wind” “blowing debris” “storm of dust” “to the edge of the world, a place of angry air” “skeletons” “Spartan plants” ”deliberate and fierce” “whipping” “wind-battered” 196: child labor “I cannot tell about this time” “new prison walls” “obedient as machines” 198: “Another year? Which year should we choose for our healing?”

2. Polyphony: (Anglo)Canadian voices/national identity • Mr. & Mrs. Baker (222-226) • Memo, Cooperative Com. On Japanese Canadians, 248-250 • 226: “Where do any of us come from in this cold country? Oh Canada, whether it is admitted or not, we come from you we come from you.” “We come from the country that plucks its people out like weeds and flings them into the roadside. . , , this land that is like every land”

3. Freud, “Mourning and Melancholia” 1916-17 • Melancholia: “mental disorder characterized by severe depression, guilt, hopelessness, and withdrawal,” severe pessimism” • Both triggered by loss; mourning by death of object; melancholia by loss of object still desired and not dead, so ambivalent struggle/ exhaustion between love and resentment at abandonment • Naomi’s development from melancholia through mourning to healing?

4. Naomi’s fear of speech, inability to speak, emotional undevelopment (‘infantile narcissism’), muteness ”Cat got your tongue” 42:Kingbird 189: “All of Aunt Emily’s words. . . are like scratching in the barnyard.” “They do not touch us where we are planted” “The words are not made flesh. . . All my prayers disappear into space.” 243, “Our wordlessness was our mutual destruction.”

5. Healing, recovery? How suggested, asserted,none? 199 “Is there evidence for optimism?” 144-45: Rough Lock Bill, “never met a kid didn’t like stories. Red skin, yellow skin, white skin, any skin. . . Don’t make sense, do it, all this fuss about skin?” 243, “Love flows through the roots of the trees by our graves.” 246, “This body of grief is not for for human habitation. Let there be flesh. The SONG OF MOURNING is not a lifelong song.” 248, epilogue: memorandum “value and dignity of Canadian citizenship”—begins Bible, ends human rights discourse.

6. Close reading: historical, social, literary contexts, incorporating these to some of suggested topics (8 points) • Thematic contribution to larger work and canon. • Stylistic, figurative, literary & linguistic elements in context of other Asian American literary texts. • Narrator/speaker; relationships between characters portrayed, dramatic scene represented & other relevant narrative aspects • Interdisciplinary analysis incorporating immigrant history, ethnic identity-formations, generational, gender, social & psychological aspects