Dionne Brand

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Dionne Brand, 2009

Dionne Brand (born January 7, 1953 in Guayaguayare, Trinidad and Tobago ) is a Canadian writer .

Life

Brand came to Canada in 1970 to study English and Philosophy at the University of Toronto . She advocates the rights of minorities , especially black women. In addition to her work as a poet and short story writer , she also writes non-fiction and documentaries .

Brand taught at various universities. Especially in the 1970s and 1980s she worked socio-politically in various institutions for the rights of black women in Canada and elsewhere, in trade unions and anti-racism associations. In 1983 she supported the revolution on the Caribbean island of Grenada , from where she had to be evacuated after the American invasion. In 1991 she toured Europe and South Africa , where she supported Nelson Mandela .

It was included in the anthology Daughters of Africa , edited in 1992 by Margaret Busby in London and New York.

In 1997 she received one of the Governor General's Awards , namely "for Poetry" and the Trillium Book Award , one of the Toronto Book Awards in 2006 and the Griffin Poetry Prize in 2011 (for ossuaries ). She lives near Toronto . Since 2011 she has been Research Professor of English and Theater at the University of Guelph , just under 100 km away.

There are two translations of her works in German.

What We All Long For

Vietnam War , 1970. It is night. A couple try to flee the country with their 6-year-old son Quy. When they get to the boat, the boy is gone. You have to leave without him, it's off to Canada.

Toronto in 2002. Carla, Jackie, Oku and Tuyen are young, friends and they enjoy big city life. They were all born in Toronto called "second generation immigrants". Carla works as a bicycle courier. She still hasn't got over her mother's suicide, which she witnessed 18 years ago. She takes care of her younger brother, who moves in the petty criminal environment. Jackie owns a second-hand shop and above all doesn't want to get lost in emotions. Oku is a poet, unhappily in love with Jackie. He doesn't dare to confess to his ambitious father that he hasn't studied for a long time. Tuyen is an artist and the sister of Quy, who was lost in Vietnam and whom she never met. Even today, not a day goes by when her parents are not desperately trying to find their son.

While the four young people conquer the city together, talk, design exhibitions and lead a completely normal urban life, Quy survived as a criminal in the Thai underworld. Finally, after over 30 years, he comes to Toronto. But just before he meets his family, a dramatic event occurs. On the whole, a cosmopolitan novel about identity, desire and loss.

Works

  • Fore Day Morning , 1978
  • Earth Magic , 1979
  • Primitive Offensive , 1982
  • Winter Epigrams , 1983
  • Chronicles of the Hostile Sun , 1984
  • Rivers Have Sources, Trees Have Roots : Speaking of Racism, 1986
  • Sans Souci and Other Stories . Stories. Williams-Wallace, 1988; therein: No rinsed blue sky, no red flower fences.
    • Transl. The single ore. Karin Simon: No clear blue sky, no fence made of red flowers, in women in Canada. Stories and poems . dtv 1993, pp. 219-229
  • No Language is Neutral , 1990
  • No burden to carry. Narratives of Black Working Women in Ontario, 1920s-1950s, 1991
  • Bread Out of Stone , 1994
  • In Another Place, Not Here , 1996 short story
  • Land to Light On , Poems 1997
  • At the Full and Change of the Moon , 1999 short story
  • Map to the Door of No Return : Notes to Belonging, 2001
  • thirsty , 2002
  • What We All Long For . Narrative. 2004
    • Übers. Matthias Müller: What everyone longs for. Novel. Atrium, Zurich 2007 ISBN 9783855350407
  • Les désirs de la ville. L'instant même, Montréal 2011
  • Love Enough. 2014
Movies
  • Listening for Something - Adrienne Rich and Dionne Brand in Conversation
  • Long time comin '
  • Sisters in the Struggle
  • Older, Stronger, Wiser

literature

  • Astrid Fellner: Translating Toronto on a bicycle: Dionne Brand's "What we all long for" and the challenges of urbanity , in: Stefan Brandt, Frank Mehring Ed .: Transcultural spaces: Challenges of urbanity, ecology and the environment in the new millennium. Gunter Narr, Tübingen 2010, pp. 231–244
  • David Tavares, Marc Brosseau: The Spatial Politics of Informal Urban Citizenship. Reading the Literary Geographies of Toronto in Dionne Brand's "What We All Long For". Journal of Canada Studies , 2013, pp. 9-33 full text
  • Marc Brosseau, David Tavares: Écrire la ville multiculturelle. La polyphonie torontoise excentrée de Dionne Brand , in Études canadiennes - Canadian Studies, Revue interdisciplinaire des études canadiennes en France, 64, 2008 ISSN  2429-4667 (digital) pp. 79 - 97
  • Nora Tunkel: The Impossible Art of Mapping the Past: Dionne Brand , in dies., Transcultural imaginaries. History and globalization in contemporary Canadian literature. Winter, Heidelberg 2012, pp. 144 - 155. Zugl. Diss. Phil. University of Vienna 2009

Web links

notes

  1. ↑ With a map of Toronto, which shows the most important daily routes and whereabouts of the main characters.
personal data
SURNAME Brand, Dionne
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Canadian writer and documentary filmmaker
DATE OF BIRTH January 7, 1953
PLACE OF BIRTH Trinidad