Date of Award
8-2008
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
English
Supervisor
Donald Goellnicht
Language
English
Abstract
This thesis investigates the first and second diasporic generations' approaches to "home" as represented in Dionne Brand's What We All Long For and Madeleine Thien's Certainty. Brand and Thien offer nuanced and counter-intuitive conceptualizations of "home" that emerge in the house, city, and world at large. The authors demonstrate how one's achievement of "home" does not only entail a negotiation of these spaces, but also of familial relations. This thesis argues that the first generation's "diaspora consciousness" is a trait that the second generation inherits and transforms. This second generation exhibits more of a "transnational consciousness," a term that this thesis offers to describe the nomadic lifestyle of the second-generation characters.
Recommended Citation
Nguyen, Karen, "Diasporic Approaches to "Home" and Family in Dionne Brand's What We All Long For and Madeleine Thien's Certainty" (2008). Open Access Dissertations and Theses. Paper 4652.
http://digitalcommons.mcmaster.ca/opendissertations/4652
McMaster University Library