meeting Darrin Hagen and reading his novel, The Edmonton Queen, this past week has led to a lot of firsts for me. i got to learn about this whole piece of edmonton that i never even knew existed (at least, not in such a grand fashion) and i got to meet and speak to a person who not only uncovers queer history in edmonton, but was – and continues to be – at the forefront of the drag community in the city.
not to take any significance away from Darrin and his novel, but this whole experience has made me think about my own culture and where my community can be placed in edmonton. i too am a part of a minority – albeit one that is met with less resistance from society for its existence. interestingly enough, today is actually one of the most important days for my culture/minority: it’s lunar new year. being Buddhist, there were numerous traditions that needed to be carried out and of course, attending the new year’s ceremony last night at the local monastery was a must. during the entire ceremony, i couldn’t help but look around and see the large congregation that had come together in celebration.
I really like that you acknowledge that minority groups don't have a sense of place that's necessarily any smaller than other people in the city. That's actually one of the things I thought about while I was reading Darrin's book... It focused around Jasper Ave, Whyte Ave, and mostly Flash, only venturing outside of the underground every so often. I think minority groups in the past were forced to have a smaller sense of place within the city --- In "Places of Refuge", I believe the speaker acknowledged the rest of the city, but with such hate and disdain... She had a large sense of *space* within the city, but her sense of *place* seemed very restricted to Club 70.
ReplyDeleteEven in today's time, do you think that some minority groups may still be forced into a smaller sense of place? What about people with physical or mental disabilities? What about prostitutes or drug dealers/users? I don't even think that some people would consider prostitutes or drug dealers/users a minority group in the same sense as other groups.
Happy New Year, Susdmonton!! I'm guessing from the sign above that the minority culture you're part of is Vietnamese. And that makes me want to ask you about something I've always found puzzling about Canada: the lack of Vietnamese-Canadian writing. So what I want to ask you here (and this is unfair, of course, asking you to answer for a big historical phenomenon) is why, do you think, you don't feel like part of a minority culture? and do you think your experience is generalizable to Vietnamese Canadians in general? (Again, geez, those are impossible questions.) Maybe the Vietnamese-Canadian writing is out there and in French (which would make a certain colonial sense) or maybe it's out there in English and I'm ignorant of it - but this is something I've always wondered, and your post emboldens me to put this question out there.
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