Anna Yin: Mississauga's Inaugural Chinese Poet Laureate

My original article was titled:Remembering Canada, and I wrote it around Remembrance Day in November 2015.

The article discusses several issues around remembering Canada, but here, I will focus on one issue: Mississauga's (Chinese) Poet Laureate.

This is what wrote, where I notice a young boy in the ceremonial crowd a young white boy:

Here is a photograph of the young boy, and the people surrounding him:



And why wasn't he chosen to lay a wreath? Why was it, if we pursue this thought, both were girls? Why not boys, or one boy and one girl?

This young boy was strangely alone. I couldn't see any father, mother, or sibling next to him. He was like some angelic apparition, watching, observing.

His jacket looks like army camouflage, camouflaged as a contemporary young boy's fashion statement, as though he were ready for war.

What will he do when he is of age to join the army? Which army will he join? What foes will he be willing to fight? Will he have a country, Canada, by then, where clear loyalties and allegiances can be forged, or will he become increasingly confused and alienated? Perhaps he will be the second Charles Martel, this time fighting enemies within, a delicate and much harder mission. Will he be up to that challenge?

Yin has arrived at the pinnacle of the West's equality cult, but a cult which excludes this young white boy. Equality is for the likes of her: woman, immigrant, non-white - or "ethnic."

Below is a photograph of two girls from the region's school, a Chinese and an Indian, who were given the honor of placing a wreath at the ceremony. Both girls were wearing black tops and pants, like Yin. Did they co-ordinate their macabre attire with Yin's? Yin is going around schools "promoting" poetry, so I wouldn't be surprised if they planned to "dress" like her. Isn't the blood-red of the poppy symbolism enough ? It is the strange nihilism I see all the time, and even the vibrant and colorful ethnics have embraced it, where color and decoration are discarded for a strange, fetishistic mourning black.

And some words on Yin, who also wore black to this ceremony:

Again, I am struck by Yin's casual attire, as though she had no genuine respect for the occasion, and was there simply as an invited guest to a function which she doesn't really believe in, or has any attachment to.

But Remembrance Day doesn't warrant such nihilistic, false mourning. After all, the poem does say:

To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.

It is a poem about war, and death, but above all about the insistence of life after war, and a firm and stubborn insistence on the continuity of life.

Anna Yin in black


Yin Reading in Flanders Fields

Yin has written a poem about her thick Chinese accent, in anticipation of her critics. She stresses that she came as an immigrant, with limited knowledge of English, and started to write poems after taking ESL (English as a Second Language) classes. But, that doesn't change the reality that a Chinese woman, with an incomprehensible Chinese accent, reads a quintessential Canadian poem. And everyone stands politely listening. Below the text is a video of Yin reciting her poem "My Accent."

My Accent

It is charming.
I assure you.
I assure myself,
and choose to believe so.

Languages have colors.
I want to show you my tender blue.
But you cut off with fork and knife,
quicker than my chopstick taps.

My accent grows trees,
trails and winding roads
to west coast landscape.
It points to the open sky;
yet clouds are too heavy
and form raindrops.

My papers collect them
then dry in silence.
I have hesitated many times
before I speak;
now it develops teeth.
Even with gaps between,
I decide
…this is my voice.

Here is how Yin introduces her poem "My Accent" at a poetry reading:

Speaking of Racism, for those who don’t believe I can write poems in English… I have written “My Accent”…

But I do have many people believed in me and supported me and helped me. Thanks a lot.

ESL classes did not help her with her relative pronouns.

And of course, as all accented (and even the non-accented) Third Worlders know so well, Canada is full of white racists.

So, we hand out, gratuitously, prestigious prizes to anyone who shows up and picks up the pervading (non)wisdom by simply uttering those magic words - "racist" - or evokes that emotion of guilt, and specifically white guilt, demanding that we owe them everything we've fought for, including our art and literary standards.

Yin is just another racist whose target is those whites who have given her everything, including a safe and peaceful country. And her poetry is infused with allusions to China which she left behind for these greener pastures, but a place she will never leave psychically, or even physically. It is an error to think that her predecessor Chinese have assimilated, or melded into the Canadian culture. They are simply carving out their own China, however diluted from the original it may seem, as will she. Her advantage is that she has ample support for this, both from her these long-term Chinese residents and their Chinese-Canadian safe haven, and from the guilt-ridden, "racist" contemporary whites.

Below is the Chinese version of Yin's poem The Woman Within Her House, from here:



This poem could have been written for the young boy above:

Here is the English version:
The Woman Within her House

Around the doorway, you wander,
breathe in two languages.

Remembrance is a house
with two back yards.
You want to add windows.
Not for increasing its value,
nor to make it pretty.
Just because you live there.

The wind swings the door open—
shadows float in moonlight.
Someday you’ll get tired
and list the house for sale.

But somewhere else, behind a door,
whispers imitate languages.

Nobody knows where you have been—
the rain is like a curtain,
your face veiled.
"Whispers imitate languages" is a clever and creepy allusion to the babbling Babylon Canada has become. Yet, Yin does not try to overcome it, with her seemingly valiant grasp of the English language. Instead, she is keeping her babble, she is keeping her Chinese language, and adding it to the mix. She has no intention of dismantling this Babel.

(By the way, other non-English-speaking foreigners have reached much higher levels of erudition with the English language. She's not breaking any frontiers. Joseph Conrad, among others, learned English later in life, and used it as his language of authorship. Earning a multiculturalism policy influenced small-town literary award does not put Yin in that league of men. One could argue the same for Indians who write in English, but Indians speak English practically from birth, and they are bilingual, rather than late-learners of the language.)

Now, here is the most significant part of this entry on Mississauga's Poet Laureate. Below is a photograph of Yin in Ottawa to celebrate the Chinese New Year in Parliament Hill, last year. She stands like some dignitary from China, surrounded by the flags of Communist China. Here is what the Chinese flag signifies:

The flag of the People's Republic of China is a red field charged in the canton (upper corner nearest the flagpole) with five golden stars. The design features one large star, with four smaller stars in a semicircle set off towards the fly (the side farthest from the flag pole). The red represents the communist revolution; the five stars and their relationship represent the unity of the Chinese people under the leadership of the Communist Party of China (CPC). Sometimes, the flag is referred to as the "Five-star Red Flag."