The city as language(s): from Montreal to Belo Horizonte

In 2012, Daniel Grenier published in Quebec his first book, a collection of short stories called Malgré tout on rit à Saint-Henri. The title makes reference to an old working class neighbourhood in Montreal and to a Raymond Lévesque song written in the fifties. As the stories are more often than not narrated in a voice close to the vernacular, the collection could be thought of as a particularly "Québécois" book, and even a "Montréalais" one. However, as this communication will try to argue, the specific qualities of the book lay elsewhere and are best shown in the way it grapples with concepts like migration and alterity, which are part of a larger reflexion on a global American imagination. Indeed, in two stories the reader is told about the difficult adaptation of Brazilian immigrants in Montreal. The longest of the two, "Les mines générales", is the tale of an extremely strange round-trip from Montreal to Belo Horizonte, and back. The story is about the cultural – and ontological – shock experienced by a Brazilian family arriving in Quebec, but also, in return, about the deep changes suffered by a Montrealer who takes them under his wing and accompanies them back in their country. This communication will investigate the intercultural bonds that appear throughout the book (especially in this story), while putting the emphasis on the different elements that make it an original contribution to Quebec's literature.