Diaspora Voices

I am the subway, on the Yonge line in Toronto, reading TOK: Writing the New Toronto, and thinking that this is probably the most typical place to be part of that new diaspora—the worldwide movement of immigrants. I remember the first time I rode this same subway some 30 odd years ago as a new immigrant to the city. There were fewer variations in skin colour back then. Now there is a complete range from pale pink to blue black. And the languages being spoken are just as varied.

That teenager across from me, nodding in time to the music on her earphones, could be the girl in Edward Lee’s story, the one who speaks French, English and Cantonese, but whose father now finds her almost an alien creature when he encounters her with a group of her Canadian friends. I hear Spanish being spoken a few seats away. That man, slightly dishevelled, could he be the Max in Guillermo Verdecchia’s story, the waiter from El Salvador who sleeps in the basement of the restaurant...