Essay Sample: Multiculturalism in Canadian Short Stories

Multiculturalism is one of the main features in Canadian literature. Short stories and poems by Canadian writers have depicted the aspect of multiculturalism in their writing. Due to various reasons, Rohinton Mistry in his: "The Ghost of Firozha Baag" and Dionne Brand in her "Sans Souci" had multiculturalism in their writing. The two authors have presented their personal life experiences that enable the reader to access and understand their stories. The paper focuses in the need to understand multicultural in Canadian literature, as well as an illustration on how Mistry and Brand used life experiences and how they eased accessing and understanding of their experiences by readers.

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The reason why Canadian literature has the feature of multiculturalism is that of diversity in the population of Canada. The country has a historical link to having people from different cultures like the Chinese and Japanese. Cultural diversity in Canada has a representation in literature in bringing out the attitude and attention of Canadians towards multiculturalism that occurred due to the immigration of people from different backgrounds into Canada (Balint, 2016). The inclusion of different cultures in society through legal reforms is still a significant challenge in Canada. Therefore, as a way of promoting positive social relations in the growing cultural and ethnic diversity, Canadian authors have chosen multicultural as a distinct literal genre in their writing.

Mistry and Brand have expressed their personal experiences through narration. Through storytelling, the two authors have illustrated their experiences to the reader. In the case of "San Souci", Brand uses storytelling to narrate both the historical and contemporary experiences of the oppressed black female (Brand, 1994). As a Black female in Canada, Brand describes with passion how gender and race affect women in Diaspora. In "The Ghost of Firozha Baag", Mistry also uses the literary devise of narration in exploring the lives of different people staying in Bombay with a focus on Parsi to insinuate the life of Indians staying in Canada (Mistry, 1989). The use of 11 interrelated stories by Mistry narrates on the Diaspora life for Indians staying in Canada.

The two authors have applied the context technique to enable the reader to access and understand their experiences easily. In the case of Brand, as a black woman who immigrated to Canada at the age of 17 years expresses her experiences within the context of a woman in Diaspora facing the issues related to and gender and race (Brand, 1994). The author was writing her experiences from the contextual perspective, a situation that enables readers to access and understand her experiences with ease. Mistry, as well as a Parsi middle-class Indian male who lived in Canada for almost 30 years, eases the understanding and accessibility of the writer of his experiences using the context of the narration. The socio-cultural background, experiences of colonialism in India as well as his life in Canada reveals the context of the story in illustrating the life of a Parsi community member in the Diaspora (Mistry, 1989). As a result, demonstrating experiences within the context enable readers to understand and access experiences of Brand and Mistry easily.

Conclusively, multiculturalism is a familiar literal genre in Canadian literature because the population of Canada consists of people from different cultural and ethnic backgrounds. Mistry and Brand have expressed their personal experiences through narration. Through storytelling, the two authors have illustrated their experiences to the reader. The two writers have as well applied the context technique to enable the reader to access and understand their experiences easily. The illustration experiences within the context would allow readers to understand and access experiences of Brand and Mistry easily.

References

Balint, A. (2016). Memory Transmission, Survival, and Multiculturalism in Contemporary Canadian Literature. Alea: Estudos Neolatinos, 18(3), 422-434.

Brand, D. (1994). Sans Souci. Toronto (Ont.): The Women's Press.

Mistry, R. (1989). Swimming lessons, and other stories from Firozsha Baag. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.