What We All Long For

By Dionne Brand

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 friends—each of whom is grappling with their own familial complexities and heartache.
     By turns thrilling and heartbreaking, Tuyen's lost brother—who has since become a criminal in the Thai underworld—journeys 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 For is an ode to a generation of longing and identity, and to the rhythms and pulses of a city and its burgeoning, questioning youth.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: May 18, 2011
• ISBN: 9780307367624

Dionne Brand

Dionne Brand is the author of numerous volumes of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. Her latest poetry collection, Nomenclature: New and Collected Poems, won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Poetry. Her other collections have won the Griffin Poetry Prize, the Governor General’s Literary Award, and the Trillium Book Award. Her works of nonfiction include Bread Out of Stone and A Map to the Door of No Return: Notes to Belonging. From 2009 to 2012 she served as Toronto’s poet laureate, and in 2021 she was awarded a Windham-Campbell Prize for Fiction. She lives in Toronto.

Reviews for What We All Long For

[rmckeown_9 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Some of the cultural references puzzled me, otherwise a respectable read and not much else.

[candies64 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

It took a little while to get into this book, but once I did I enjoyed it. The story follows a group of friends trying to understand themselves, their families and each other while finding money to survive. It jumps from one perspective to another in a way which makes the story feel somewhat disjointed although not in an all-together negative way. Somewhat difficult to get through but a worthwhile read.

[niecierpek · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I got an advance copy of this book, and found it quite interesting. Set in Toronto, it revolves around a small group of second generation immigrants- young, Black or Asian, or of mixed parentage, straight and gay, in their early twenties, in a way inhabiting the fringes of society, yet in a way very mainstream and representative of downtown Toronto. These young people are trying to get away from their ethnic origins, from their families histories and find their own voice, their own way, their place in the society. Are clean cuts possible though? Sometimes perhaps, but it’s not really that easy to break off completely with the past. Things need to be worked out.

[whoot_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book was actually published in 2005 though I received it as an Early Reviewer book in June 2008 (paperback edition). This is a book about young adults living in Toronto, dealing with issues of sexuality. The setting and characters are compelling. While it took me awhile to get started, this is a very enjoyable book.

[allama_5 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Dionne Brand takes the youth of Toronto and brings them to vivid life in this novel about several twenty-somethings living in the city and the way their lives do - and do not - meet.I felt the main characters to be well-developed and interesting, though some of the secondary characters could have had a bit more depth to them. The motifs of youthfulness, race, and what it is to live in a city were brought to bear skillfully, as was the over-arching theme of longing.All in all, I enjoyed this book.

[lahochstetler · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I've struggled greatly with what exactly I think of this book, and even more, what rating to give it. Brand's work tells the story of four twenty-somethings living in Toronto negotiating the sometimes tragic details of their lives. There are elements of this book that are very, very good. The way Brand sets the scene in Toronto and its suburbs, in the present and thirty years earlier is excellent. Brand also creates some incredible characters who exist with a reality and depth that is admirable. Brand is a good writer- while perhaps that should go without saying for published fiction, that's certainly not always the case. But with the good comes the bad, too. Parts of this book did not impress me nearly as much. While Brand does create some very impressive characters, there were others who were under-developed, and seemed to have little purpose in the overall work. Oky and Jackie, in particular, and even Carla, to an extent, were marginal. Tuyen was far more complex and interesting than any of the others. This book is not a plot-driven one. It is very much character-driven. Brand is clearly trying to get at some larger issues. The book is about identity, about how people construct their identity and how it is constructed for them. On one level this book is about multi-culturalism in Canada, and what it means to be a Canadian of color. But even more (and connected to that) this book is about how family shapes identity. Each of the main characters is significantly shaped by tragedy in family life. Tuyen is shaped by the loss of her brother, Carla by her mother's suicide and brother's problems, Oku by his difficult relationship with his father, and Jackie by the decline of her parents' Toronto neighborhood. This is a saga about parents, children, and siblings, and how these people play as much of a role in the formation of the self as anything else. Interestingly, all of the main characters are rebelling in some way against their families, abut their rebellions serve only to underscore how deeply they are shaped by their family experiences. Ultimately my opinion was divided on this book, hence the 3. I admired some things, but disliked others, and would have liked more attention to plot and the ending.

[victoria2caplinger · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Ah, as have some others before me, I also am struggling to get through this book. I don't know that I hate it, and the lost Vietnamese character Quy has some promise, I'm just a little bored and not really finding that I am invested in the story. I love the multicultural & liberal focus, however, and will likely try to at least skim through a bit more of it.

[lasomnambule · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Move over, Amy Tan. With What We All Long For, Dionne Brand adds her fresh, authoritative voice to a mix of Asian-in-North America fiction. First published in 2005 in Canada, What We All Long For is being released in a U.S. paperback edition to be available in late 2008. Perhaps its Canada-only release is to blame for this book's absence from Booker longlists and the American literary buzz--it's shocking that this book hasn't been more widely available and appreciated before now.Brand's novel introduces readers to a parade of strikingly real characters, of at least two distinct generations. Tuyen, who readers meet during a drab morning commute in the first chapter, is not only the protagonist but the moral center. She is the filter through which readers perceive all of the novel's myths, histories, occurrences, and character changes. The youngest child of a Vietnamese immigrant couple, Tuyen has a compelling past and a magnetic figure. However, satellite characters such as Carla, Jamal, Oku, Jackie, and Tuyen's brother Binh add complex layers to the plot of the novel, and are no less compelling than Tuyen herself.It is through the name of Jackie's clothing store, Ab und Zu, that the novel's theme is revealed. Over a meal of Jamaican food, the younger generation of characters discusses the name of Jackie's new store: "'Ab und Zu! What the fuck is that anyway?'" What the fuck it is is the central tension of the novel. Ab und zu, "'Now and then'" Jackie thinks, indicates the way all of the characters, the young ones and their parents, shuttle between their pasts and their presents. Tuyen's insomniac parents long for the son they lost while emigrating from Vietnam, but they miss more the selves they lost. Tuyen's mother misses turning a breech birth, while Tuyen's father obsessively draws the buildings of the strange city of Vancouver (in which he can only peddle Vietnamese food, not continue his career as an engineer). Tuyen, Carla, Jackie, and Oku confront and remember their parents and their parents' varied immigrant lives. Hating their parents for simultaneously capitulating to Canadian culture and for refusing to blend in, each child makes a voyage home during the course of the story, and each child makes a voyage of memory into their past.In short, this is a surprising novel that interweaves the experiences of Canadian immigrants and their children, while revealing what we all long for: longing itself, for our pasts and for our futures.

[seriousgrace · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Brand, Dionne. What We All Long For: a Novel. Toronto: First St. Martin (Griffin edition), 2008.From the very beginning I thought this book looked interesting. Originally published in 2005 I had heard that it had even been used in university Lit classes. Upon knowing that tidbit I assumed a level of complication with the characters and a deeper depth of plot. Here is what I came away with: complicated characters that all want something (parallel to the title). Their relationships to one another go around and around - always circling one another - but really, going nowhere. This is where the plot came up short. That sense of longing hums along the fine lines of each relationship, and there is a common theme of boundaries but beyond those connections each character is lost. Tuyen is a lesbian in love with her straight best friend. Longing for someone she can't have, sexual preference is Tuyen's barrier. Carla is the biracial bike messenger Tuyen is in love with. Carla has a troubled brother. Longing to steer her brother straight, lack of money is Carla's barrier to helping him. Oku is a music-loving college drop-out of Jamaican decent. His unrequited love for Jackie is his longing while her boyfriend is the barrier. Jackie longs for simplicity. Her barrier is being attracted to more than one man.Oddly enough, the linear, uncomplicated character of the story (told in first person) is the one with the most depth and more intriguing story. Quy is the brother of Tuyen. He was separated from his parents in Vietnam as a very young child and has been lost to them ever since. His story is how her survived refugee camps in Thailand and how eventually, he made his way back to Tuyen and her family. Tuyen has never met this long-lost brother so when he reunites with his parents life changes for Tuyen.The last character in What We All Long For is probably Brand's most complex and mysterious: the city of Toronto itself. As the characters move in and out of its restaurants, nightclubs, streetcars, and alleys the city responds. It lives and breathes and entices just like its human counterparts.

[pdebolt_1 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

The characters in this book are vivid and strong, but I could find no connection with them or their situations. There were times when I frankly wanted to give up reading this book, but felt I owed it to the ER program to finish it. It may have suffered inordinately by comparison with Crossing to Safety, a novel I had just finished and loved. It is unlikely that I will read another book by Dionne Brand.

[undertheteacup · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

While I got through this book very quickly, it wasn't as satisfying as I had hoped. Better books have been written on the subject of 'what we all long for', the connections between people, their relationship to their environment, etc.I felt that the author's metaphors didn't quite come together as they might have, and I was not too impressed with the plot twist at the end.A fun book to go through once, but you probably won't want to keep it around for second reads.