I found Carla's story to be the most interesting of the entire novel. She deals with the longing for her mother, Angie, and for freedom from the trouble her brother Jamal causes. From a very young age, Carla has felt responsible for all of Jamal's wrongdoings, especially because their father, Derek, refused to take responsibility of his son for so long. Every thought of Carla's is consumed with the regret of her mother's suicide or her brother's stay in the detention center. At the end of the book, Jamal is bailed out of jail and Carla is finally relieved. "She wasn't free of Jamal, really, but she didn't want to be--she only wanted to be free of his pain." Also, Derek is the one to help him out of his bind after Carla finally found the courage to stand up to him after avoiding him for so many years. However, Carla is still motherless, and will “never be free of Angie.” She will soon discover that her brother has involved himself in another crime involving the hijacking of Binh’s car, and most likely feel obligated to help him. Essentially, Carla will never find the peace and freedom she longs for. Although she did finally find the courage to stand up to her father, the pain she feels inside does not subside. Her mother can never be replaced, and her mysteries will never be fully answered. Carla will always feel responsible for Jamal, too, because of his connection to Angie. Unless Carla learns to live for herself and transcend from the troubles of her past, she will always be filled with a longing she will not be able to satisfy.

I thought Tuyen was one of the most interesting characters, although Carla and Quy had interesting lives as well. Tuyen struggled to find herself, divided between being an outsideer in her family, and trying to define herself as an artist. More than anything, she wanted to find her own life, outside of her close-nit family. Tuyen was born in Toronto, she doesn't have that connection to Vietnam. She did not want to find Quy, she didn't want to step into the past and try to remember someone she did not know. At the end of the novel, I think she realized that Quy was the key to make her mother and father, and binh happy. It would end their sleepless nights and their years of wasted money. It would give her family a purpose again, a satisfaction. the narrator says, " she was apprehensive about what this journey to find their brother would open up in their lives, her life." To her, Quy is gone, a fantasy her family only wishes were there. She never actually suspected that binh would find him, how would he?

I liked this novel a lot. It was similar to others that we have read in terms of not focusing on a single character and for its flashbacks. But, I liked the way that all the characters were interconnected, while having their own "life" at the same time. In this novel every character had a longing for something, or someone. For Tuyen's mother, Cam, it was her lost son, Quy. Both of Tuyen's spent the rest of their lives beating themselves up over who had technically lost their son. "Cam played the vision over in her head, trying to regain the moment when ahe would arrive at herself in the present with her family and her mind intact" (Brand, 113). They became insomniacs over it. Cam even spent years writing to people at camps asking about her son. Some examples of these letters are found on pages 116-118 of the text. "Her mother, too, must have been awake pacing, as she ahd done over the last many years. Pacing ot writing an endless stream of letters to authorities in every Southeast Asian country, searching for Quy" (Brand, 116). But, luckily for Cam, her wish did come true. By the end of the novel Quy was found. Although the book ends with her and Tuan running out to his beaten body, one can hope that he lives and is not lost to them again. But, even if he does die, which is not hinted at, his parents can rest assured that they found him again, and this time his loss was not their fault. I also wonder, if he does live, if he is the type of man that they would welcome into their family in the long run. i am curious to know whether his habits and ways follow those of Tuan and Cam's family. Or, if they are so radically different that he doesn't even fit in.

After just finishing the book, my impressions seem to be similar to many. The end of the book was very anticlimactic, but overall I found it to be an acceptable read. Although not my favorite of the books we’ve read this semester, I think Brand did an excellent job in painting the multicultural jungle which is Toronto.

In regards to Talbrey’s comment about Quy being able to adjust to his family, I think that part about Quy at the end leaves hope that perhaps he could enjoy a new life in a new place, and even reconnect with his family.

I was going to write this entry about Tuyen, but I wonder what Quy longs for, so I’ll write it about him. The end of the book makes it seem like he longs for the happiness and success that he was denied. From early on he notices that Binh has become the son he has not, “My brother got my father and mother at the thick point of their guilt. They don’t see him, they see me. The pour all their senses into him, paying and paying out till he’s sick with indulgence.” (139)

The Binh/Quy relationship seems to be a very strange one to me. At first Quy seems to envy that Binh has replaced himself in the family’s eyes, “But I’m so full of rage, a kind I’ve never felt before, and I want to take a swing at him and I want to hug him as my brother. I know that I’m going to take him for everything he’s got... (310)” But then it appears as if he mellows out and realizes he shouldn’t hate Bhinh for who he has become, but rather what he has achieved. Quy reflects that, “He’s got the world in front him… People disappear all the time into cities. Why not me, eh? Why not Me? I could run a store like Binh” (311).

It would also seem like he yearns for a familial connection, like when he talks about his mom and dad crying and playing games with his older sisters and going to a strip club with Binh. However, he himself admits he’s not a good guy so I’m unsure if this is fully the case. I mean he states in the beginning of the book that, “You probably think if I hadn’t lost my mother and father, if they hadn’t lost me, I would’ve been a better person. Don’t be sentimental”(9).

At the end though, I think there is hope that he is about to turn the corner to a new life. He is described as only being “half dead” as Jamal drives off, and just prior to that he reflects, “They’ll forgive themselves now. I’ll marry someone, I’ll have a kid or two, and just like that man I’ll sit outside, I”ll find someone to tell this story to, and I’ll laugh because all my predictions and interpretations were wrong”(312).
I tend to hope that Quy survives and is able to overcome his turbulent past.

I think that Quy is longing for his family. He was accidentally left behind as a boy and he is aware that his parents are responsible. So, even though he doens't seem to be too mad at them and he doesn't want to say anything against them or place blame on them he also seemss to be longing for the will to forgive them. Yes, he finds what he is longing for by the end of the novel but he is still sort of separate from his family. He wants his family the way he remembered them as a little boy. He seems to be jealous towards Binh: "It's the things that were mine, and he got them double. He's got my mother and my father and my two sisters. He's got the world in front of him" (pgs. 310-311).
I think that because he was left alone so young he is somewhat emotionally stunted. He still can see the image of his mother in red and his father with hands in pocket. The monk gave him something he didn't have. However, he realizes that all he needed and wanted was his parents. "You would say that he saved me from worse things that could have happened to me; that he calmed my life, took my tears away. So why complain about the way the darkness made us all hallucinate, made us all see the water ripple in a certain direction, made my sisters' hearts quiver, my mother and father think they were each holding my hand?" (p. 199) I just get the sense that he doesn't want to be upset with his parents but he is and he wants to forgive them.
So, to an extent Quy finds what he is longing for. He gets his family back but there is still a great divide among him.

Carla longs for freedom. She also longs for Angie, but that longing leads her to cling to Jamal and that hurts her. Angie told her to "hold onto the baby tight". That is what Carla has done ever since Angie killed herself and it has controlled her life. Her last thread to Angie is Jamal. She loved Angie, so even in Angie's death Carla wants to do what she can to help her. She longs for Derek to take responsibility for what he has done, or even more so what he hasn't done, especially when it comes to Jamal. Derek has been no sort of father. He did the bare minimum and even then put most of the work onto Nadine. At the end of the story Carla confronts Derek and with the help of Nadine she is finally able to get what she longs for. She isn't responsible for Jamal anymore. She has freedom. She isn't free of Angie but she doesn't want to be. She just wants to be "free of the pain" and now she is able to. Without feeling responsible for Jamal she is able to remember Angie for the good things, not the burden that she placed on Carla when she was just a little girl. It is kind of disappointing to see Jamal behave so badly. I don't feel bad for him so much as I feel bad for Carla. However, it seems that Carla has really made a change and is free. She says that Derek would not "lend" his car to Jamal. She seems to already know that Jamal is getting into more trouble, but this time she is not making his problems her problems.

Carla was definitely one of my favorite characters in the book. I guess I identified with her about the whole bicycle thing, and how it adds some freedom to her life. When Brand describes this, she does it very well, and poetically. Especially when Carla is getting her anger out on her way back from visiting Jamal in prison. "As fast as she was riding, she could still make out the particularity of each object or person she saw, so acute this searing light around her, tingling her skin. Could anyone see her? Drenched in lightening?" (Brand 28) Carla was really in tune with herself and the city every time she got on her bike. It offered her the escape that she needed from the thoughts of Angie and Jamal. Because of everything that happened with Angie's suicide and Carla's longing to care for Jamal, I would agree with Megan in that she will never find what she is longing for. She will always feel obligated to take care of him, however her bicycle is, for her the only way to escape it.

Tuyen seems to think her longings are straightforward: "a bigger studio, Carla, another family" (151). However, with another family, she wouldn't be the same person that she is. In the end, the addition of Quy seems like it might come close to providing her with just that, as a family with Quy would be a completely different family than that she had always known (though not quite giving her the gratification that she thinks she wants. However, the idea that Quy may be lost again to a carjacking- done by Jamal, no less- seems that Tuyen will never get what she thinks she wants. A relationship with Carla, in the terms she imagines it in, will certainly never be possible, especially because of Jamal's final actions.

I, like many of the other posts, found Carla's story really interesting. Carla is dealing with the responsiblity of her brother, Jamal. He is constantly getting in trouble and blames it on his race. Carla's father has given up on him and he has no one but Carla. The only time they talk is when Jamal is asking Carla to bail him out or let her know that he has been in trouble once again. Carla withdraws within herself when this happens, because for these group of friends, talking about family is something that they avoid. Carla eventually confronts her father and Nadine actually defends her. Carla blames Derek for Angies death saying that he killed her. Derek says that he has sacrificed enough for Jamal and that he is trying to build a home and Jamal is not helping this. Derek has never been a real father to Jamal or Carla their entire life. She feels bad for Nadine for having to live a life like this and raising two children that were never her own. Nadine confonts Derek as she tells him to take responsibility for his children and his role as a father. I think that Carla needed this confrontation with her father to let out some of the feelings that she was never able to come to terms with.

Quy is definitely the odd character out in the book, which makes him interesting. He learns when he is very young to use people in return for what care they give him. He's also quick to betray. He begins running errands for a woman at the refugee camp. When her gang gets in a war with the monk, he sees that the monk will win (because "women never win") and switches sides. He follows the first monk around for a long time, begging and stealing, and always taking a percentage. He expects to be stolen from just as he expects to steal. When the gang that follows his monk comes up against another monk, he switches sides again. This monk has a laptop, a cell phone, and connections. Quy follows the same pattern of relationship with him; when it's no longer convenient to be his follower, Quy steals his laptop and takes off. Quy is even planning on taking advantage of Binh when he's "found." He sees the money and power that Binh has and seems to be planning to take over his operation, or possibly just to steal his car. But, in his last passage, he seems to find something else. Now that he has a family to support him, he finds what he's always needed: a relationship that will be providing and giving no matter what. He decides that he can lead a normal life, maybe own a store and settle down with a family. Instead of ripping off his family and leaving, he can rely on their never-ending support. It also helps that at the moment he feels he has let himself down the most, when he's bleeding and broken on the ground, his parents rush to him.

I think that Carla is one of the more interesting characters in this story. She is someone who is living in the past with all these things holding her back from truly being who she wants to be and being happy. Her anger at her father, and even at her mother, for abandoning her and her brother and the obligation she feels for Jamal, who ends up being a punk, even after everything she has done for him, has Carla prisoner and she can't escape from the sense of entrapment she feels. I believe she longs for a life of freedom from her family. She is a character who doesn't seen to feel quite as comfortable in the city as the others. She has her apt and her job but she moved out of her house because her relationshp with her father was fairly non-existant and the resentment in her regarding him was ever present. She has her apt but more than Carla's ideas on life and enjoying her youth and loving living in the city, she talks about her mother's suicide and her father's abandonment. She continues to go back to that and talk about her mother handing her the baby and how she had to hold Jamal and protect him. It's an image that appears many times.
Page 104 "Okay, take him inside now. Careful, careful. Hold him carefully."
Page 112 "She was holding a precious bundle... and the bundle was fragile and elliptical and she wished that she were not the only one responsible for it."
Page 248 "A big A meant Angie, a wormy line meant said, a dash mean to and another wormy line, this time the length of the page, meant Hold the baby."
As the last chapter begins, it shows Carla finally feeling free of her brother because, really, her brother seemed to always represent her mother.
Page 313 "She rode through the city, now feeling free. Free of Jamal... she wasn't free of Jamal, really, and she didn't want to be - she only wanted to be free of his pain. And of her protectiveness toward him."
Her new ideas of trying to stop being the fall back for her brother were realized and in the end of the book it talks about her getting ready to go home, drink wine, listen to music, and hang out with her friends. Before, she never seemed to really enjoy herself in these simple ways but now, she finally felt she could with the burden of her brother off her chest.

I liked this book. I thought it was very well written and it moves along nicely. As I mentioned in class, I think Nadine is a very dynamic, interesting, and a fairly overlooked character. To me, it seems like shes longing to have a family that feels like a family. Instead, she has an unfaithful husband who is basically a huge ass, her children resent her for raising Angie's kids, and even though she took Carla and Jamal in, they don't see her as someone to confide in. Nadine is a people-pleaser with a big heart. No one ever said 'thank you' for taking Angie's kids in. Unfortunately, she was berated for it by her sisters. I think Nadine gets walked all over and lacks a backbone, but at the end she finally gets it. She realizes, after Carla comes over and calls Derek out for being irresponsible, that Derek is, in fact, a true blue jerk through and through. She finally summons up the courage to leave him at the end. Perhaps it's not courage she lacks, perhaps its self respect, but either way she leaves Derek and I think that speaks the loudest. We never see how things turned out for Nadine which I found somewhat disappointing. I like to think that she and Carla finally develop a healthy relationship. Nadine may not be a "main character" but she plays a good size role in the novel in that, even though Carla doesn't feel it, Nadine tries to help handle Jamal. She even visits him at jail. She also tries to get Derek to bail him out. Initially I found her somewhat pathetic. She has good intentions, but lacks the wherewithal to do anything progressive until the end.

I think that the most interesting character in the novel would have to be Carla. I thought that she was really in touch with the realities of the world, but at the same time felt really bad for her because she carried the weight of the world on her shoulders when it came to her brother Jamal. She wanted Jamal to so badly see that he could not act the way he did, especially because he was black. The passage on page 32, Carla explains that Jamal sees the city as something to get tangled in. This was interesting to me because it shows the real differences between them. Carla is cautious with everything she does and Jamal just jumps right in, no seeing the consequences. I guess this would be the reason that she takes care of him, and shows the difference in their maturity levels. The issue of race is also a big part of Carla. " Jamal you realize you're black right? You know what that means? You can be in the wrong place at the wrong time."p35 The idea of race takes over the way that she sees and judges everything and every situation. Even when she is looking at the cover of InStyle magazine and writes a letter to the editor on page 90 " Stop creating Bo Derek with something that goes back centuries in Africa, America, the Caribbean and Canada." She is so prideful of her heritage and resents the fact that her heritage is taken away and placed in the hands of people who do not deserve it. I do not think that Carla will ever be truly happy because she takes on the burdens of things that cannot be controlled.

Tuyen is definitely the character with whom I identified most in this text. She’s really complex, but at the same time incredibly down to earth and unique. I could absolutely imagine meeting her in Toronto through a friend or acquaintance if this book were real. Throughout the text Tuyen seems to long for understanding above all else. She suffers a great deal from the lines that are drawn in the sand in society, such as white and non-white, gay and straight, masculine and feminine, traditional and western. In reality she exists somewhere in between all these categories that society expects an individual to be firmly on one side of. Okay, so she’s clearly not white, but nonetheless she was born in Canada and went to school speaking English with predominately white kids. Clearly she’s not very traditional in terms of identifying with her own culture, but she still maintains her family ties, which although they are difficult, are important to her identity nonetheless. As to whether or not she finds what she’s longing for, I think it’s an on going struggle and an ongoing question for Tuyen. She seems to have her head screwed on straight; unfortunately for her it’s the rest of the world that needs to get with the program in order for her to find happiness. Carla, for instance. Noting tension and ambiguity of the ending, it certainly remains to be seen whether Tuyen gets what she’s been longing for.

What Tuyen is looking for is simply the unobtainable – Carla. Despite Carla’s repeated protestations that she was straight, Tuyen refuses to give up the possibility of the two of them together. “If she made herself useful enough, if she listened and coaxed enough, maybe Carla would come around.” This of course is not how it works with sexuality, but at the same time love is not something that works as easily as we would like it to be, and too many of us will fall in love with someone we cannot have. The only difference with Tuyen is the added sexual conflicts involved. In the end, she still will not be able to “turn” Carla, despite her attempts to convert her by bringing her to the Pope Joan. “Tuyen actually invited Carla in the hopes that some lever in Carla’s mind would switch on, some desires discovered.” Without that dream girl, instead Tuyen turns to casual sex, to one-night stands that simply can never live up to that unrealized ideal. We are left at the end though to wonder if the two will link up, as Carla will longingly grab Tuyen’s hand in their last scene together, and the book ends with Carla waiting for Tuyen to come home. Maybe Tuyen’s desire is not so unobtainable after all, but we only can speculate on that.

I found this book really interesting. I thought that the connections between the characters was really well done. I was interested by the fact that throughout the entire novel each character has a desire for something more in their lives or someone in general. The character that I found the most interesting was Tuyen. I thought that she stood apart in a way from the other characters in the book because she escaped from the life of her parents at a very young age and she longed for freedom throughout the novel. "She was Younger than Binh by eighteen months, but she fealt she was much more matur, since he seemed to need their parents approval far more than she. Here he was going on another fruitless search trying to get their attention again, she thought, as she made her way up the staircase" (Brand 14). At a very young age Tuyen moved away from her parents to start her own life and break free from her parents life that they had enclosed her in. Alwalys independent Tuyen desires to remain that way and continue her life as a free woman. She manages to do this by alwalys remaining an independent person and never truly requires anything from anybody.

I found the premise of this book applied well to a college course because in college we are still at that "looking" stage in life. (Not to say you ever completely grow out of it)The four friends in this book bond in that they all try to reject their parent’s foreign past; the “other houses, other landscapes, other skies, other trees” while trying to create new spaces of identity for themselves. However, I think Tuyen and Carla struggle the most. Specifically with Tuyen who struggles with her own sexuality and her parents constant longing for their lost son Quy. They never come right out and say what happened to Quy but she pieces the clues together like the letter and the photograph and the strange sadness of her parents. Tuyen longs for multiple things to come into her life. She want a sexually open relationship with Carla, she wants to become a real artist, and mostly she wants to draw a line between herself and her highly cultural family. By this i mean “other” culturally explicit. She doesn't want her identity to be vietnamese but it is not that she wants to block off all association with its traditions and food etc. It begs bigger social questions like what does it mean to be concidered "an authentic vietnemese person?" But I think what she wants to escape most are the contradictions her parents place on her about keeping with her ethnic heritage while assimlating into “regular canadian life.” I don't think she has found what she is looking for in the end, but I believe she is on the road to discovery. Carla and Tuyen have a weird interaction at the end with Carla grabbing Tuyen's hand which I thought could imply sexuality. So perhaps there is a future there, though it remains undetermined. But in terms of her parents releasing her from this inner conflict, I think it is something personal that she will have to find herself and i disagree with a few other blogs in that I don't think Quy's return will really affect her personal identity and its growth in the long run.

To me, What We All Long For typifies contemporary literature. Unlike older literary traditions, which seem more often to think of time as linear, and which seem to develop characters in the context of greater, overarching schemes and compulsions (think Romeo and Juliet's "misadventured piteous overthrows"), the characters in What We All Long For are very much individual, conceiving of time in terms of its application to themselves. In some ways, lacking these overarching structures that give characters in older novels definition, contemporary novels focus quite a lot on creating a personality for their characters, developing those personalities, and validating the characters' actions. Oku in What We All Long For is no exception.

Oku proves right from the beginning that the greater context of a settled place within his family or a conventional education is not one of his concerns. The first thing we hear about Oku's past, in fact, is the story about how he "told the phys. ed. teacher, Mr. Gordon, to eat shit" (p.18) in High School. Shortly after this, on the subject of his work and family, we are humorously told that his "primary job" to earn his meals is good grades, but that he has quietly dropped out of school, and so must steal food from the refrigerator when his father is not around (pp.46-7). These are acts of defiance, showing that the last thing Oku wants is a conventional, agreeable lifestyle.

Interestingly, the life that Oku has chosen - that of a wandering poet - carries its own longings. In chapter 13, which describes Oku's relationship with "the old Rasta" and "the musician", Oku seems deeply moved by the geniune nature of these men, even reflecting on the Rasta: "The man had definition. He was living on the street, but he had definition"(p.169). True, this is a lifestyle very different than the one he would hold if he were to accord with his parents, but a convention nonetheless, and something which Oku seems to desire. Of course, there is also the matter of Jackie. Oku wants her bad. Being the only guy in a group of four rather close friends can be tough. And of course, we always want the one we can't be with, don't we?

Dionne Brand’s choice of a title for this novel suggests she may have wanted readers to focus on this subject from the beginning. There are many cases of characters longing for something, but Tuyen is the most intriguing. She navigates cultural, generational, and sexual boundaries to carve out her own individualism. Her greater longing is for a relationship with Carla beyond friendship. She describes Carla in artistic terms; comparing her to a Remedios painting. Carla has “The wraithlike face, the high cheekbones, the reddish hair” with “the city’s smogged air around her seemed painted in decalcomania” (17). Tuyen feels struggles to break through the sexuality barrier that limits their relationship. It’s not entirely clear if she is succeeding when the novel ends. However, the last line appears to, at least, keep hope alive, or perhaps strongly suggest that Tuyen will get what she longs for. Carla is waiting for Tuyen to come home and “she longed to hear Tuyen chipping and chiseling away next door.

I agree with Lauren, Megan, Lindsey, and Brittany that Carla is one of the most interesting characters in this story. Carla, as well as the other charcaters in this story have painful family histories and continue to be haunted by their past. Being abandoned by her mother when she committed suicide would be dificult enough for any young girl but being asked by her mother to take care of her infant brother Jamal was a burden that continues to challenge her. Her anger towards her father for not really being a father just adds to the insult and anquish that she feels. Being biracial also brings on many challenges for Carla. She has difficulty gaining a sense of self, where does she belong, who she she let into her life. She longs for stability and relationships that are safe. She longs to be free. "She rode through the city, now feeling free. Free of Jamal, free of Derek and Nadine. She would never be free of Angie. She didn't want to be free of her. She only wanted the memory to lose its pain, not its intensity. Derek had bailed Jamal out. Jamal was going to live with him. Whether that lasted or not now was up to them. She wasn't free of Jamal, really, and she didn't want to be - she only wanted to be free of his pain. And of her protectiveness toward him." (313)