In Voiceless People by Marco Micone, the attitude of the immigrant toward labor is explained. Micone argues the distinct cultures and identity that are in danger of extinction using the framework of the Italian community. Micone uses dramatic techniques to make the case that the deferral between cultures is one of the most overpowering impacts of immigration. He effectively dramatizes the immigrant community's quiet in Montreal. Voiceless People and Addolorata's original version's writing style captures the realistic and punctured impacts of immigration. Micone emphasizes the problems being presented by using narrator figures and direct addresses to the audience. Additionally, interpretation plays are crucial in bringing out the dramatic tensions brought on by opposing worldviews and the way they are expressed. Micone’s initial critics, Sherry Simon notes that the talks in Micone’s plays yield contradictory versions of the actuality hence confronting each other in mutual disbelief. The debates between common characters portray that Micone’s domestic dramas expose the reader to circumstances of the immigrants as manifested in particular contexts. Micone begins with a chorus that connects a story about Antonio’s emigration to that of the mid-century emigration in Italy. Voiceless people’s dramatic and thematic features enhance the development of the story and introduce readers to the devastating immigrant conditions in the Italian community.
Although Micone emphasizes the double-marginalization of female immigrants in each play, the central concern including the driving force of dramatic action is bestowed on Addolorata. Addolorata together with her husband Johnny are offered two varying time periods, one before their wedding and the other ten years afterwards when she departs from him. Addolorata at 29 years and Lolita at 19 act together in several scenes and sketch a progressive history of oppression and sadness in the care of her father and later, her husband. Towards the last part, Addolorata seeks an independent life, which compels her to leave her wedding while Johnny cries out saying, “I cannot be alone. You cannot leave. You cannot leave me” (Micone, Addolorata 101).
Micone also employs at least educational and personal style in the plays. The styles are meant to portray the intercultural understanding that transpired between the two time periods that were offered to Addolorata. In the 1972 Montreal narrative, Micone tells Luigi’s story as a second generation immigrant. Micone introduces Luigi’s wife, Danielle, who is Quebecois to show the reader the shared political values and divided comprehensions of culture. In the 1987 narrative, there is a scene where Luigi chooses to visit his Italian village along with his teenage reverberation. The memories there affiliate with a vivacious community that is tackled with the current reality of a ghost town (Micone, Trilogy 224).
Micone uses the theme of silence to introduce the reader to the ontological ruptures alongside sociological suspensions of immigrants. Voiceless People has these aspects throughout the book as clearly expressed in each trilogy play. In fact, Voiceless People mimics Micone’s own background having been brought up by parents who use the Italian dialect at home and learn the English dialect at work. Since the bosses at the workplace are Anglophone, the working class had to communicate only in English. The encounter of two different cultures, each with its unique haphazard and deficient way of assimilating learners to Quebec society, Anna and Antonio choose to enroll Mario, their son to an English school hopeful that he will soon assume the prestigious title of their Anglophone bosses. On the other hand, Nancy their daughter uses French exclusively in the play and teaches in an English school. Micone presents her as a once integrated person into the Quebecois society with her cognizance of her status as an immigrant. Moreover, Nancy acknowledges what may seem to be a surplus of languages although her community continues to be voiceless due to the inadequacy of language that speaks of their torn experience. Nancy suggests the need to provide immigrants with alternative methods of expression that reflects their paradoxical circumstance and creates conditions to enhance their unlimited operations (Micone, Trilogy 68).
These two choices, therefore, portray sociocultural disorientation and familial disintegration since the family is caught between two distinct languages considered to be a “no man's language” (Micone, Langagement 196). Consequently, the efforts to achieve acculturation subjects Antonio’s family to cultural dispossession. Antonio tells Mario that, “The English School is for your future…Fuck the future, man! I wanna live now. NOW, okay?” (Micone, Trilogy 58). In this scene, Micone shows the reader the impact of effects in English language and the essence of punctuating sentences using exclamation points. Mario is excited with his freedom of mobility and speed as he connotes: “RICKY: Fuck, what a beauty, where are we going, Mario? Here” (Micone, Trilogy 61).
The personal trajectory used by Micone indicates the compelled dispersal decisions of immigrants in mid-century Montreal. At thirteen years, Micone in the company of his mother immigrated to Montreal from southern Italy. Having been compelled by unemployment and poverty to leave, Micone’s father became part of the increasing Italian Diaspora with millions of scattered rural people from Italy’s different regions. Micone concretizes his father’s attachment using “torn between” with assumption between torn and shooting. He notes, “Emigrating is not a freely laid act, when it is not the guns that chase disgruntled workers are misery” ( Micone 6).The ontology in the first tear suggests that, "torn between the impossibility of remaining and the difficulty of becoming other," immigrant identity oscillates between being Italian and being Quebecois (Micone 88). Micone shows the reader the subsequent suspension and foundational rupture through which the Italian migrants attach to the general perspective of immigrant communities. The quotation uses the expression “to be torn between” as a description of the paradoxical situation of immigrants who have to choose between the impracticality of staying and the difficulty of becoming another.
Micone’s play portrays the loss of link between identity, nationality and language in developing a self-conscious dramatic literature. Due to the history of compelled displacement, a simple coincidence of language, identity and nation is not accessible to immigrants. The melancholic tone that is evident in Micone’s dramatic work underlines the expected losses arising from the dissociation. In fact, all his characters are subjected to weird alienation immigration which imposes to both lesser and greater extents. “As long as the words of my childhood evoke a world that words from here cannot grasp, I will remain an immigrant "(Micone 9). This quote portrays Micone’s reconfiguration plays that recall Quebec’s now national, comical and dramatic heritage. In the new Quebec theater, Micone seeks to restore the voice of the previously colonized Quebecois identity to enhance their yearning to succeed in the political, linguistic and cultural struggle between English and French.
In conclusion, it is necessary to note that despite the indefinite nature of the voiceless condition of the immigrants, Micone strives to provide the linguistic solutions. Seemingly, Micone’s character in French is constantly changing but the literary language in the book reflects on the changing aspects of the immigrant culture. Clearly, Micone defines immigrant culture owing to its accelerating movement and mobility space. As a result of his fluctuating French language, Micone manages to capture the movement, history of rupture and encounter of the immigrant culture. Most importantly, the mix of language deters the notion of any cultural expression and national culture that is being fixed. The allophone characters used by Micone portray that the linguistic binary in relations to colonialism is unlikely to solve the single language regarding cultural authenticity. Instead, it is specifically this binary involving French and English logic that renders the allophones unexplained hence binding them to non-identity. Therefore, having been trapped in the immigrant absurdity for being what they are not, the allophones have eventually triangulated the binary.
Works Cited
Micone, Marco, and Maurizia Binda. Voiceless People. 1982.
