Diaspora Dialogues

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Shorthand

Writing Exercise

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I’m a big believer in projects. A project really is a challenge to yourself, a record of all of your attempts at solving that challenge, and, hopefully, a solution.

Here’s a simple project. Write a poem each day for two weeks. You can raise the stakes by:

  1. Setting a minimum line requirement;
  2. Swapping with a writing buddy by midnight each day;
  3. Introducing elaborate punishments if one of you fails to meet the daily deadline;
  4. Rewarding yourself at the end of two weeks;
  5. Writing in the style of your friend, of your favourite author for one of the weeks;
  6. Repeat but change the genre.

A Month in Manitoba

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Preface/disclaimer/warning: I was young, eighteen, and generally terrified of life.

These are the days that I sketch
and shelve in my head,
the days I can trace a line
around earth and sky, green and blue,
the toy farm house at the side
the plastic animals.

I’ve laid on this chess square
and yellowed the grass below me
for 18 days and he hasn’t come.

The line smudges.
The animals unscrew their heads screaming.

Author of the Month: Ian Williams

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Tell us about yourself.

I’m here. I’m known for writing poetry and fiction, but I have an active, if somewhat secret, non-fiction life. The notebook beside my bed is full of dreams. I record the events of each day on a calendar. I could tell you, for example, what I did a year ago today. (I went to my goddaughter’s sixth birthday party. According to the entry, it was “pleasant, lovely.”)

When did you realize you had a passion for writing?

I liked paper as a child, whether that meant drawing on it, writing on it, or folding it into marvels of engineering. I liked writing, too, the actual formation of letters during Penmanship class. I had two excellent teachers in grade 6 who made us free-write daily, and in grade 7 I wrote a magical, slippery thing that turned out to be a poem. It was like an icicle, so perfect, surprising, otherworldly, and slightly dangerous in the mystery of its formation.

What pieces of writing/authors have had the greatest impact on you?

The first collection of poetry I bought with my own money was Margaret Atwood’s The Circle Game. I read it until the pages came loose. Someday, if someone asks me to compile a best-of-the-19th-20th-and 21st centuries, greatest hits album, I’d include tracks by Hopkins, Dickinson, Woolf, Eliot, Sexton, Beckett, Atwood, David Foster Wallace, Zadie Smith. Once you start naming names, you’re bound to forget someone. Nabokov.

How and when do you find time to write?

I don’t have a sophisticated theory of how and when anymore. I need a mixture of silence, solitude, and stimulation—none of those very literally, but more like an attitude or mental scape. Periods of editing, especially near the end of a project, require more discipline and a sustained block of time, often months.

What has been some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced as a writer?

This present novel is proving itself a challenge because it requires an enlargement of mind, much like the enlargement of lung during a deep inhalation, and true to lung, there’s only so much air one can hold and only for so long.

How have you changed as a writer over the years?

The voice is clearer. Whose? I suspect that phenomenon has more to do with years than with writing. A less cryptic answer would be, I feel free to calculate risks, to solve a technical problem in a wholly unconventional way. In my mind, readers are no longer strangers, but friends, meaning I have a constant hum of affection for them even when we’re out of touch.

Never Left Canada

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BODY #2

Wherever I go, it is my transfer point.
Citizenship is like a sports trophy.
It gives you access to benefits.
You get to use the spa, the clubhouse. Membership.
You get connected with people who might offer you wealth.

Canada is not my destination. Because my destination is gonna be somewhere much
more magical than this. But I have a thing for trophies that give me VIP membership.
ACCESS. If access is for all, I really don't care about how my passport looks like.

But when itʼs not, whenever I cross the border, I am put into a box.

What is your citizenship?
Hong Kong.
Illegal immigrant.

What is your citizenship?
Canada.
Model minority.

What is your citizenship?
Um. I hold a British National (Overseas) passport?
British wannabe.

Yes.
I am the colonized trying to be the colonizer.

As a teenager living in the British Hong Kong, I had an obsession with the United Kingdom.
My favourite bands were Blur, Pulp, Suede, and Radiohead.
My favourite actors were Jude Law, Daniel Day-Lewis, and Christian Bale. I had a total crush on him when he was twelve playing Jim Graham in the Empire of the Sun.
I watched it twelve times throughout my life, I believe.
I suppressed my love for Leonardo DiCaprio even after Titanic because heʼs American.
And as far as I understood as a teenager, Americans are jerks.
Nobody is truly proud of being American, other than the white Americans.

I bought Reeboks sneakers with the British flag on the shoelace plates.
My favourite accent was the British accent, and I still find it hot.

I didnʼt know nothing about the politics among England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. But there was one thing that I thought they had in common—“they are all really cool.”

My favourite brand of cookies was Walkers Shortbread.
My favourite musical instrument was the bagpipe.

You know that song Scotland the Brave?
I almost got moved to tears every time I heard it.
As if I found my roots.

And I still have some of those feelings nowadays when that memory is triggered.
But now I have to first relive the experience of admiring the British.
And then remind myself of why I admired them.
And then I try to unlearn that idea without invalidating myself too much.

But most of the time,
Whenever it happens, when some random Scottish guy in a kilt decides that he
should play the bagpipe on the street in Toronto,
I still allow myself to indulge in that sense of prestige.

Being British is not in my blood; itʼs in my head.
I heard that the British were the worst people, historically speaking.

But whatever that means,
they still have a special place in my heart.

The Secret

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Lights fade in, curtains open. Olivia, a six-year-old little girl with pigtails and large brown eyes, is sitting in her counsellor’s room. She is wearing a pink dress and sits cross-legged on a sofa as she anxiously looks at her counsellor. Mrs. Jenkins, Olivia’s teacher, sent her to the guidance office because she was concerned that there have been issues in Olivia’s home life that have been affecting her behaviour at school. These issues are often reflected in her drawings.

OLIVIA: Well . . . I guess I can tell you my secret, but you gotta promise that you can’t tell anybody, okay? I was drawing this picture and he told me that it was as beautiful as I was. I like to draw a lot of pictures, even at school, see! (Olivia shows her disturbing drawings that consist of nudity and sexual themes to her counselor) But I don’t think Mrs. Jenkins likes them very much because she never hangs them up on the board with the other pictures. I even used pretty colours like pink, purple, red and blue to colour in the castle. It looks just like mine, except my castle is more beautiful and not as big. Sometimes he joins me in there to have tea parties and we eat cupcakes and drink juice. He likes it when I sit on his lap, but sometimes he puts his hand up my dress and we play puppet games. See! (Olivia refers to her pictures) I’m the princess and he’s the king. Sometimes I don’t like the puppet games because it hurts my insides and I cry. He gets sad when I cry but we always giggle it off, so I know he doesn’t mean to hurt me, because we’re just playing games, but sometimes I just don’t like it. (Beat) He says I shouldn’t cry too loud because if mama heard she would get really mad and I don’t like it when mama gets mad because she starts yelling really loud and I get really scared. But I really like playing with him, we have a lot of fun. He did do something very bad though . . . but if I tell you, you can’t say a word to anyone, or else! Got it? Cross your heart! Okay so . . . (whispering) He actually ate ALL the cupcakes by himself, so if mama knew that daddy wasn’t sharing, she wouldn’t be very happy.

GOTE

GoalIn this scene Olivia is anxious to tell her guidance counselor her secret, but she wants her counselor to keep hidden as well.
Obstacle/
Other		Olivia is afraid that if she tells her guidance counselor about her secret then she might tell somebody like her mother who will, as a result, be very upset and mad at Olivia.
TacticsTo Punish/Threaten—Olivia tells her counselor that she cannot tell anybody about her secret “or else”. By saying this, Olivia is suggesting that there will be punishment if she fails to keep the secret hidden to herself   To Explain—Olivia explains to her counselor exactly why she should not tell anybody her secret ex) “so if mama knew that daddy wasn’t sharing, she wouldn’t be very happy.” Olivia hopes that her counselor will keep her secret after explaining her reasoning behind keeping it hidden. To Promise—By making her counselor “cross her heart” Olivia believes that she will indeed keep her promise and not tell anybody about her secret.
ExpectationsOlivia expects that her counsellor will keep her secret. She is young and naïve so she cannot imagine anyone breaking a promise because she has yet to come across that in her life.

Sisterly Love

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She looked at me with her big eyes that could turn a heart of stone into a ball of mush. “But why won’t they let me play with the rest of them? ” I had no words. Even I was astonished at what just happened. Why is it that my six-year-old daughter can’t go and play on her brother’s team? Are you freaking kidding me? The worst part was listening to the reasoning from the coaches, especially from that fat guy Mr. Red. What kind of a stupid name is that name anyways. His only reply to me was that “the girls have their own team. They shouldn’t even be playing sports anyways, they should just stick to doing their hair and makeup”. Oh no, he didn’t . . . I did NOT just hear that. I spent my whole life working for a bright future for these kids only to have the rights and freedoms of my daughter being stepped all over.

I grabbed her hand and kissed her forehead telling her that everything would be alright . . . it wasn’t. She was watching TV while I was on my phone when my son Jay came in with tears rolling down his eyes. When he told me that coach Red kicked him off the team, I lost it. I grabbed my keys and drove to the school going at least 20 kilometres over the speed limit. Everything was a blur and time went by slowly. He was the first person I saw and I was the last person he wanted to see. I didn’t yell at him or hit him, I just smiled and told him that he just messed with the wrong family. He knew me and how effective I was in the courtroom but this was something else, I’m on another level now.

I told the principal that she had better put my daughter and son back on that soccer team but she protected coach Red. Without any fuss I smiled at her and gave her a piece of paper that left her trembling. I just brought a storm of crap on this school and nothing could stop me unless I got what I wanted. I spoke with Emily later that night about the whole incident and she broke down before me and fell in my arms. I got Jay downstairs and had them watch movies when I got a call from the office. The school hired Dom to represent them, that guy always dragged me down then screwed everyone over to get his position. I ran to the computer and worked all night, 9 hours to be exact. “Your honour, women are not to be subjected to objectification ever in our society and need to be treated as equals according to the Canadian Constitution, yet before me is a six-year-old girl that is objectified AND has been denied the right to be an equal.” That was a good start, it wasn’t flashy with big words but it got to the point.

A few weeks into my own case I noticed something, these people are ruthless. Dom did all his research on me and my kids by looking through every aspect of my life, no luck.

I did it . . . I won. A shame that the school year ended already.

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