Two strong and widespread communities of peoples that we could perhaps call “national” did once establish themselves in North America. But both of them owed the force that created them not to themselves but to their oppression and dominance by others. A French-speaking “nation” came about in Canada in the province of Quebec in the nineteenth century under the power of British colonial rule. They had a distinct identity in English-speaking colonial Canada since they spoke French. For English-speakers, anyone who spoke French was a second-class Canadian citizen. The other “nation” was the slave community of blacks in the United States before the civil war. Both groups created a genuine unique culture out of their oppressed state. The culture of French-speakers oppressed in Canada or of blacks enslaved in the old American south never reached great sophisticated heights but it was real. Now French is a legal language in all the provinces of Canada. The descendants of black slaves backed by federal civil rights laws are free American citizens although still fighting against injustices committed against them because they can be identified by their black or brown skin. But the very success of the immersion of both groups in North American culture sapped the strength of their “national “ communities. Now they are important communities with political might competing with immigrant communities and other communities for a just place in North American culture. History has condemned once and for all the culture of Canada and the United States to be universal. Let the media and the intellectuals of both countries go on forever with their daily talk and writings about “the nation” and “national” issues. It is all just empty deadpan prose without even a hint of poetry or national authenticity. Talk to French-Canadians or American blacks who have authentic personal feelings in contact still with the old passions and beauties born from oppression and enslavement. Both groups knew what it felt like to live in a nation. They felt hemmed in and isolated behind barriers set up by fierce enemies. They had nothing emotionally and spiritually to do with anything but the people around them suffering like themselves and talking among themselves the language born from suffering that their oppressors could not understand. Their communities have been diluted by contact with our universal North American culture and are now gone. They will tell you that no national community has ever existed for long in North America.
Daniel McNeill’s novella The End of All Beginnings is available at
Read it free on Kindle with a free app or buy it on Kindle for $1.99.
Also available as a book for $5.99.
A powerful and very dramatic exploration of love and relations between
a 70-year-old man and four women, two sisters 18 and 19, their mother
46, and a lesbian friend 22. It is full of well-written dialogues between the five
In various situations including sexual relations. The drama moves fast right
from the start and it is impossible not to read it as quickly as possible (it
can be read in less than three hours} to an ending that is totally unexpected
and explosive. A complex drama that moves with its own momentum towards
one liberating ending to all its beginnings.
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