Philip Huynh’s The Forbidden Purple City: New Canadian Refugee Narratives and the Borders of the Socio-Political Community

  1. Pedro Miguel Carmona-Rodríguez 1
  1. 1 Universidad de La Laguna
    info

    Universidad de La Laguna

    San Cristobal de La Laguna, España

    ROR https://ror.org/01r9z8p25

Revista:
Humanities

ISSN: 2076-0787

Año de publicación: 2024

Volumen: 13

Número: 2

Páginas: 39

Tipo: Artículo

DOI: 10.3390/H13020039 GOOGLE SCHOLAR lock_openAcceso abierto editor

Otras publicaciones en: Humanities

Resumen

This paper examines Philip Huynh’s short story collection The Forbidden Purple City in relation to its engagement with the nativity–territory–citizenship triad on which Western socio-political communities found the principles of affiliation of their members. First, the Canadian reaffirmation of a discourse of national benevolence is contextualised to later draw on how the collection is nurtured by boundary-crossing ethics that interrogates any sequential relation between past and present, Vietnam and Canada, which usually structures refugee narratives. It is argued then that disruptive and productive time/space interconnections delegitimate any simplistic representations of easily assimilated grateful refugees, fracturing the convenient narration of Canada as a benefactor concerned with old and new international humanitarian causes. The newness of Huynh’s stories relies on their mobilisation of the discourse of state citizenship through exceptional migrancy and its disruptive border nature. In contrast to premises of birth and geographical territory, which lose ground as backbones of any affiliation, citizenship appears incomplete and processual. The stories use the precarious performativity of collective homogeneity expected of a former settler colony, like Canada, to launch agency and resistance to state homogenisation, and de-institutionalise the refugee subject to critically intervene sovereignty and political subjectivity. Finally, the stories evince that Canada’s social spectrum is ideal to explore the threshold opened by the adjacency of sameness and otherness embodied by Huynh’s protagonists. Their condition as diasporic refugee subjects augments the transformative potential of new refugee narratives, in which literal and metaphorical polymorphous borders unveil the bases of the contemporary Canadian socio-political community.

Referencias bibliográficas

  • Agamben, (1995), Symposium, 49, pp. 114
  • Heller-Roazen, Daniel (1998). Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, University of Stanford Press.
  • Agamben, (2008), Social Engineering, 15, pp. 90
  • Anderson, Benedict (1983). Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, Verso.
  • August, (2021), Canadian Literature, 246, pp. 40
  • Bhabha, Homi K. (1990). Nation and Narration, Routledge.
  • Black, Shameem (2011). Fiction across Borders: Imagining the Lives of Others in Late Twentieth Century Novels, Columbia University Press.
  • Burchell, Graham (1999). Distant Suffering: Morality, Media and Politics, Cambridge UP.
  • Brodie, (2009), University of Toronto Quarterly, 78, pp. 687, 10.3138/utq.78.2.687
  • Chau, David (2023, August 20). Spring Books: The Past Is Always Present in Philip Huynh’s Forbidden Purple City. Available online: https://www.straight.com/arts/1226006/spring-books-past-always-present-philip-huynhs-forbidden-purple-city.
  • Sugars, Cynthia (2016). The Oxford Handbook of Canadian Literature, Oxford University Press.
  • Coleman, Daniel, Glanville, Erin Goheen, Hasan, Wafaa, and Kramer-Hamstra, Agnes (2012). Countering Displacements: The Creativity and Resilience of Indigenous and Refugee-ed Peoples, University of Alberta Press.
  • Diehl, (2021), Canadian Literature, 246, pp. 85
  • Donaldson, Emily (2023, March 29). Available online: https://emilydonaldson.com/all-the-broken-things-by-kathryn-kuitenbrouwer/.
  • Espiritu, (2008), PMLA: Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, 123, pp. 1700
  • Fleischmann, Aloys, Styvendale, Nancy van, and McCarroll, Cody (2011). Narratives of Citizenship: Indigenous and Diasporic Peoples Unsettle the Nation, University of Alberta Press.
  • Flieger, Jon R. (2023, February 11). A Review of Philip Huynh’s The Forbidden Purple City. The Malahat Review 208 (Autumn). Available online: http://www.malahatreview.ca/reviews/208reviews_flieger.html.
  • Oliver, Kelly, Madura, Lisa M., and Ahmed, Sabeen (2019). Refugees Now: Rethinking Borders, Hospitality, and Citizenship, Rowman and Littlefield.
  • Kamboureli, (2009), University of Toronto Quarterly, 78, pp. 659, 10.3138/utq.78.2.659
  • Huynh, Philip (2019). The Forbidden Purple City, Goose Lane Editions.
  • Jefferess, (2009), University of Toronto Quarterly, 78, pp. 709, 10.3138/utq.78.2.709
  • Kamboureli, Smaro, and Miki, Roi (2007). Trans.Can.Lit, Wilfried University Press.
  • Kamboureli, (2013), University of Toronto Quarterly, 82, pp. 87, 10.3138/UTQ.82.2.87
  • Keohane, Kieran (1997). Symptoms of Canada: An Essay on the Canadian Identity, University of Toronto Press.
  • Keren, (2009), Studies in Canadian Literature, 34, pp. 22
  • Moi, Toril (1990). Kristeva Reader, Basil Blackwell.
  • Walsh, Lisa (2019). Refugees Now: Rethinking Borders, Hospitality, and Citizenship, Rowman and Littlefield.
  • Kuitenbrouwer, Kathryn (2014). All the Broken Things, Random House Canada.
  • McGill, Robert (2017). War Is Here: The Vietnam War and Canadian Literature, McGill-Queen’s University Press.
  • McGregor, Hannah (2013). Complicit Witnessing: Distant Suffering in Contemporary White Canadian Women’s Writing. [Ph.D. thesis, University of Guelph].
  • Moss, (2017), Canadian Literature, 232, pp. 11
  • New, William (2023, May 12). #656 Facing all the Ghosts. Available online: https://thebcreview.ca/2019/11/13/656-william-new-on-philip-huynh-forbidden-purple-city/.
  • Ngo, (2016), Canadian Review of Social Policy, 75, pp. 59
  • Nguyen, Vinh, and Phu, Thy (2021). Refugee States: Critical Refugee Studies in Canada, University of Toronto Press.
  • Nguyen, (2013), Canadian Literature, 219, pp. 17
  • Nyers, Peter (2006). Rethinking Refugees: Beyond States of Emergency, Routledge.
  • Razack, Sherene (2004). Dark Threats and White Knights: The Somalia Affair, Peacekeeping and the New Imperialism, University of Toronto Press.
  • Razack, (2009), University of Toronto Quarterly, 78, pp. 815, 10.3138/utq.78.2.815
  • Sarkowsky, Katja (2018). Narrating Citizenship and Belonging in Anglophone Canadian Literature, Palgrave Macmillan.
  • Fischman, Sheila (2009). Ru, The Clerkenwell Press.
  • Troeung, (2021), Canadian Literature, 246, pp. 6
  • Sugars, Cynthia (2016). The Oxford Handbook of Canadian Literature, Oxford University Press.
  • (2011), Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 37, pp. 1101, 10.1080/1369183X.2011.572486
  • Fleischmann, Aloys, Styvendale, Nancy van, and McCarroll, Cody (2011). Narratives of Citizenship: Indigenous and Diasporic Peoples Unsettle the Nation, University of Alberta Press.