Multicultural identity negotiation in recent Canadian mixed-blood narratives : Boyden's Three Day Road

Title: Multicultural identity negotiation in recent Canadian mixed-blood narratives : Boyden's Three Day Road
Variant title:
  • La Négociation de l'identité multiculturelle dans Three Day Road de Joseph Boyden
Source document: The Central European journal of Canadian studies. 2018, vol. 12-13, iss. [1], pp. 133-144
Extent
133-144
  • ISSN
    1213-7715 (print)
    2336-4556 (online)
Type: Article
Language
License: Not specified license
 

Notice: These citations are automatically created and might not follow citation rules properly.

Abstract(s)
Using the example of Joseph Boyden's Three Day Road (2005), this paper addresses the "broken taboos and uncomfortable truths" of mixed blood identity in Contemporary Métis writing. I explore identity negotiation and the radical textual undoing of ethnic identity concepts (including stereotypes) reflected in Métis Canadian and US Southwestern Nuevomexicano/a writing and visual arts. Here I present how interracial understanding is challenged by mixed heritage authors and what Boyden's protagonists' identity negotiations in the shifting sites of identity formulation ("journey") are like. I study the fluctuation between more social identities, ethnic choice and specifically the possibilities for escaping prescribed identity formulations and reconnecting with tribal heritage that manifests the clashing western and Indigenous cosmologies and tackles the problems of ethnic pride, shame and stigma.
En se basant sur le cas de Three Day Road de Joseph Boyden (2005), le présent article traite des « tabous brisés et des vérités inconfortables » de l'identité métissée dans l'écriture métisse contemporaine. Y sont explorées la négociation identitaire et la défaite textuelle radicale des concepts d'identité ethnique (y compris les stéréotypes), reflétées dans l'écriture et les arts visuels créés par des Métis canadiens et américains du Sud-Ouest (« Nuevomexicano »). Nous définissons comment la compréhension interraciale est contestée par les auteurs du patrimoine mixte et ce que sont les négociations identitaires de ses protagonistes dans le cadre des sites mouvants de la formulation de l'identité (« voyage »). Enfin, nous soulignons la fluctuation entre plusieurs identités sociales, le choix ethnique et les possibilités d'échapper aux formulations d'identité prescrites et de renouer avec le patrimoine tribal – un patrimoine qui manifeste le conflit entre les cosmologies occidentales et autochtones et qui aborde les problèmes de la fierté ethnique, de la honte et de la stigmatisation.
References
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