The Hyphen by Maria João Maciel Jorge is a beautiful collection of essays filled with passion, memories, and thoughts. The author, Jorge, is an Azorean-Canadian immigrant and academic. She ventured to Canada a few decades ago in search of more opportunities, both economic and educational, from her small set of nine islands comprising the Azores. The Azores is close to Portugal and the Azoreans are often considered a part of Portugal, an off-shoot, if you will, but they feel distinctly separate. Jorge describes her coming to Toronto as an immigrant at eighteen years of age as finding the tenth Azorean island in her new home country. Toronto, she explains, has the largest group of Azoreans in North America.
Speaking of the tenth island, and with apologies to our American diaspora, I would like to settle a dispute: Toronto is the largest of the tenth islands in North America. … In this cosmopolitan tenth island, exclusionary dynamics have endured. Our mannerisms, accents, devotion to the Holy Spirit, and Azorean identity exacerbate our exclusion. Instead of being celebrated, our difference is viewed as inferior, regularly dismissed, ignored or too often mocked.
The Hyphen is Jorge’s invitation to its reader to enter her worlds, her Azorean world and her new world, and the space between the two. I found myself lost on the stunning black sand beaches of Jorge’s homeland and also excited by the opportunities Canada has to offer, particularly in education. Many people leave the Azores because although beautiful, the poverty, lack of opportunity, and male-dominated society keep personal growth down, especially if you are a woman. Relocating to Toronto traded these troubles for others, where immigrants like the Azoreans were viewed as “different” and, as such, could turn very much inward with strong feelings of isolation. Discrimination of immigrants is an old story and I hope that we become more welcoming and inviting. As I read The Hyphen, I saw where these feelings of being treated as “different” or “other” were laid bare.
I was captivated by the telling of Jorge’s cultural stories, the folklore, the history, and her references to Portuguese literature. The book has bonuses of small vignettes, quotes from Portuguese authors, which add a delightful dimension to Jorge’s essays and recounting. While I treasured her chapters, my heart was torn out by her telling of her grandmother. She speaks of the older, black-shawl-clad women as being the holders and sharers of the stories, “the magical tales called causos”, yet they are often beaten and taught to be obedient by their male counterparts.
They (the grandmothers) share psychological traits common to women of that era: fear of both God and the Devil, a belief that souls of the other world roam about in ours, and devotion and blind obedience to long-dead husbands who continue to exercise their male privilege over them from the grave. Hunchbacked and toothless, with stained hands and white hair that spilled out from the sides of a black scarf, my grandmother was one of these women.
The Hyphen offers a passionate recounting by Jorge about what it is like to leave a homeland and settle in a new land. There is much about the history of the Azores, from the early beginnings, to the author’s walks down the streets of Toronto’s Little Portugal. There is a wide girth of information in this slim book. Once I read it, I returned to the beginning to read it again. Such is the circular nature of the essays – they tie from one to another. They are not linear, but rather descriptive of the life between “the dock and the ferry”, having one foot in the Azores and one foot in Canada. The Hyphen is very much Jorge’s life inside the hyphen, her existence within the space of “in-between”.
Once I read it, I returned to the beginning to read it again. Such is the circular nature of the essays – they tie from one to another.
The Hyphen holds one’s interest, whether Jorge is speaking of her proudly earned Canadian PhD, telling a tale from old folklore, or returning to the Azores from Canada as an educated woman and hearing the confusion as to how she ought to be addressed: Madame Doctor or Doctor Madame. I came away with the feeling that I had just been educated. The learning was not only about the nine islands of the Azores, but the glorious thread that connects the Azorean-Canadians to their homeland, their new land, and to each other; a confluence of being both Azorean and Canadian, and also something more, an Azorean-Canadian. I also learned of a life being lived in the “in-between”, the hyphenated immigrants who are bicultural and bilingual. These brave people leave their homeland to enrich themselves in a variety of ways, and at the same time enrich us with what they bring. They offer their culture, their dreams, and their wish to share them. Pick up a copy of The Hyphen and Other Thoughts From the In-Between by Maria João Maciel Jorge. I have thoroughly enjoyed my time getting to know about Azorean-Canadians from Jorge’s wise perspective, the expansive life, and the multiple lives belonging to one person, while living within the hyphen. This is an education well worth receiving.
A first-generation scholar, Maria João Maciel Jorge immigrated to Canada from the Azores in 1989 and holds a PhD from the University of Toronto. She is an Associate Professor of Portuguese and Luso-Brazilian Studies and Associate Dean of Global and Community Engagement in the faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies at York University in Toronto, Canada. Her research and academic publications focus on early modern Spanish and Portuguese literature, colonial and New World encounters, and Portuguese island culture and literature. For her work in raising the profile of the Azores abroad, including the creation of an undergraduate course at York University focused on the culture and literature of the Azores, Professor Maciel Jorge received a Medal for Professional Merit from the Government of the Azores in 2019. She lives in Brampton, Ontario.
Publisher: Arquipélago Press (April 2024)
Paperback 5.25″ x 8″ | 144 pages
ISBN: 9781777626433
TMR’s Managing Editor Carrie Stanton has a BA in Political Science from the University of Calgary. She is the author of The Jewel and Beast Bot, and picture books, Emmie and the Fierce Dragon and The Gardener. Carrie loves to write stories that grow wings and transport readers everywhere. She reads and enjoys stories from every genre.