Romaner om Kanada som invandringsland

Nav Purewal har skrivit en intressant betraktelse om Kanada som invandringsland i The Walrus. Texten tar utgångspunkt från två romaner (The Amazing Absorbing Boy av Rabindranath Maharaj (2010) och Cockroach av Rawi Hage (2008)) som illusterar den stora skillnaden mellan att invandra till engelska eller franska Kanada.

Modern Canada is as much a palimpsest as a mosaic, a truth perhaps engrained somewhere in our national consciousness — and one that manifests itself in two divergent traditions of immigrant assimilation. In English Canada, the fraught legacy of cultural imperialism — whether the slaughter of native tribes or the injustice of residential schools — results in a reluctance to impose a uniform Canadian culture on newcomers; whereas Quebec, ever afraid of diluting its francophone heritage, demands that immigrants conform to an atavistic conception of French-Canadian culture.