What We All Long For

by Brand, Dionne

• ISBN13: 9780312377717
• ISBN10: 0312377711
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-11-25
• Publisher: Griffin

Summary

Dionne Brand powerfully delves into uncharted aspects of urban life, the bittersweetness of youth, and secrets families try to hide. Tuyen is an aspiring artist and the daughter of Vietnamese parents who've never recovered from losing one of their children while in the rush to flee Vietnam in the 1970s. She rejects her immigrant family's hard-won lifestyle, and instead lives in a rundown apartment with friendseach of whom is grappling with their own familial complexities and heartache. In turns thrilling and heartbreaking, Tuyen's lost brotherwho has since become a criminal in the Thai underworldjourneys to Toronto to find his long-lost family. As Quy's arrival nears, tensions build, friendships are tested, and an unexpected encounter will forever alter the lives of Tuyen and her friends.Gripping at times, heartrending at others,What We All Long Foris an ode to a generation of longing and identity, and to the rhythms and pulses of a city and its burgeoning, questioning youth.

Author Biography

Dionne Brand won the Governor General’s Award for poetry and the Trillium Award in 1997 for Land to Light On. In 2003 she won the Pat Lowther Award for poetry for her book thirsty. Her novels include In Another Place, Not Here and At the Full and Change of the Moon. She lives in Toronto.

Table of Contents

“Superb . . . Brand’s best novel yet.”—National Post

“Brand . . . translates our desires and experiences into a language, an art that allows [her] to voice that which we live, but could not utter or bring to voice until she did so for us.”
—The Globe and Mail

“Brand’s most accomplished novel yet. . . . both credible and incredible.” —Quill & Quire

"Brand is quite subtle and nuanced in her analysis of her characters." --Toronto Star

 

"...a wonderfully layered and polyphonic novel...[Brand's] writing enfolds a generosity or openness that enables it to transcend its 'artifice.' These qualities are on display in abundance in this moving novel of how families, histories and geographies shape the nature of dreams." --Vue Weekly (Edmonton)

 

"What We All Long For is a watershed novel." --National Post

 

"Brand's text is gifted with unavoidable questions of what partnership means." --Herizons