Rhapsody in Quebec

On the Path of an Immigrant Child

Akos Verboczy, Casey Roberts

• Publisher: Baraka Books
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781771861038
• Topic: Sciences sociales
• Subtopic: Biographies de sciences sociales

Born in Hungary in 1975, Akos Verboczy moved to Montreal, Quebec at the age of 11 with his sister and mother, an esthetician, who learned that in Canada women were willing to pay a fortune ($20) to have their leg hair brutally ripped out.His story begins in Hungary, where at the age of nine he learned that he was a Jew too—"half-Jew" to be more accurate. Unlike some who emigrated from Eastern Europe, Verboczy has no particularly beefs about life "behind the iron curtain." He lands in Montreal as James Brown's Living in America plays and Rocky knocks the Russian communist boxer flat in Rocky IV. The good guys he had learned to like were now officially the bad guys. Once in "America" he discovers that he will be going to French school—after all it is Québec. But then he learns that Canada is the only "place on the planet where there's no prestige in speaking French."In fifty vignettes and tales that belie all the clichés about immigration to Québec, he depicts the experience of embracing a culture and a people who are constantly obliged to reaffirm their right to exist. A keen young fencer, he identifies with Alexander Dumas's d'Artagnan, the outsider who insists that his "heart is musketeer" though his dress is not.At a time when identity politics are at the fore, Verboczy's observations are both enlightening and witty, comforting and yet challenging, and humorous. He does not hesitate to discuss thorny political issues such as language laws, anti-Semitism, multiculturalism, values, Québec sovereignty, and more. Rhapsody in Quebec is an important contribution to public debate wherever immigration is an issue, be it Quebec, Canada, United States or on other continents.

Table of contents

• FOREWORD
• WHERE I’M FROM
• STEP ONE: START BY ARRIVING
• WARTBURG BLUES
• THE BOYS OF KÁRPÁT STREET
• THE DREAMS OF MY MOTHER
• ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT
• FAREWELL MY COUNTRY
• LIVING IN AMERICA
• BACK TO THE FUTURE
• THE LANGUAGES WE ARE
• AN AMERICAN EPIC
• FOR BETTER AND FOR WORSE
• MR. NICOLAS’S CLASS
• THE TRIAL
• “NIGGER BLACK”
• THE HALF-JEW
• WORKERS OF ALL COUNTRIES…
• THE MAN WHO FAILED
• STEP TWO: FIND YOUR WAY
• EVERYONE NEEDS A SOUL MATE
• GOD, WOODY ALLEN AND ME
• THE GAZETTE
• FRENCHEMENT BETTER!
• THE ENIGMA OF THE RETURN
• THE MUSKETEERS
• ON QUEEN MARY
• THE NOT-SO-NICE DANCE
• 1990
• THE “QUÉBÉCOIS”
• MADAGASCAR POWER
• THE APPRENTICESHIP OF DUDDY KRAVITZ
• SNEEDRONNINGEN
• HUNGARIAN RHAPSODIES
• STEP THREE: ARRIVE AT THE BEGINNING
• THE LIFE BEFORE US
• A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A DEPUTY RETURNING OFFICER
• THE WORDS OF A MAN OF HIS WORD
• MONEY AND ETHNIC VOTES
• THE TIME OF THE BUFFOONS
• THE HUMAN ZOO
• LAND OF OTHERS
• MULTICULTURALIZATION
• THE PERFECT FOREIGNER
• MONTREAL TANGO
• NOUS
• RUSALKA
• THE SHIT RAINS DOWN ON MY HEAD
• The Grand Seduction
• THE BANALITY OF EVIL
• MON PAYS (MY COUNTRY)
• WHERE ARE WE HEADED?
• WHERE ARE WE HEADED?
• Also available from Baraka Books