ABSTRACT
At a time when depictions of multiculturalism and ethnicity are complicated by multiple aspects of settler-colonial affect, the writing of Canadian newcomers, whether migrants or refugees, is subject to intense scrutiny, amplified by expectations of depictions of adversity and injury. This paper explores the potential re-balancing possible with writing that engages the conflicted predicament of refugee resilience and healing as depicted in Canadian Kim Thuy’s autobiographical migrant novel, Ru (first published in French in 2009 and translated into English in 2012). The paper examines how both historical and personal traces are brought into play and how this fragmented text refuses to conform, refuses to serve as a threnody of discrimination, distress and powerlessness, and refuses as well to succumb to cultural relativism. Thuy’s novel, in both style and form, evades the usual expectations adhering to migrant narratives, instead detonating that complex experience through its performance of mediation and metamorphosis.
