York University academician Maria João Maciel Jorge urges immigrants to embrace the unexpected

Credit to Author: Lisa Evans| Date: Mon, 23 Sep 2024 15:37:57 +0000

Many newcomers arrive in Canada with a clear vision of their new life, driven by the hope that hard work and determination will lead to success. Maria João Maciel Jorge, who now goes by M.J., arrived with an illusion of a dream but no concrete plan. Today, she’s an associate professor of Portuguese and Luso-Brazilian Studies and the associate dean of global and community engagement at York University. Her story is one of resilience, embracing the unknown and forging her own path.

Growing up in the Azores, a tiny island off the shores of Portugal, M.J lived a fairly isolated life. “I was a girl in a very conservative society,” she says. The predominantly Catholic island upheld traditional gender roles, which this inquisitive young girl struggled to accept. “My destiny was to finish high school, marry some local boy and have herds of children,” she says.

Relatives from the US returned to the Azores with manicured nails wearing provocative clothing and makeup; all of which was very appealing to a young island girl who craved the freedom to make her own choices.

The summer she turned 17, she met a Canadian boy whose parents had immigrated from the Azores. “I was enamored by the idea of him and what he represented,” she says. They married when M.J. was 18 years old, and she came to Canada with a new husband and $79 in her pocket. “I remember getting on the highway and thinking to myself, ‘Where in the hell are all these people going?’ I couldn’t comprehend how everybody flew in and out of the parallel lanes. The immensity, the vastness — a land that doesn’t end — that was both exciting and terrifying,” she says.

Fascinated by the noise of the urban cities in North America, M.J. was disappointed to find out that her new husband lived in Dresden, a rural town in southwestern Ontario, not the big city she had imagined when she thought of Canada.

When her marriage ended five years later, M.J. found herself a single mother in a country where she hardly knew anyone and had no plan. “I had no clue what I wanted to pursue,” she admits.

As a young single mother, M.J. worked a series of jobs—in a restaurant, as a hairdresser, and as a maid. She laughs when she recalls being fired from her job as a maid. “He [the employer] said, ‘You may be Portuguese, but you’re not a good cleaner.’ I said, ‘I’m sorry my ethnicity has fooled you. We’re not all the same.’”

Eventually, she landed a job at Dofasco, a factory in Hamilton, and convinced her manager to let her work as a welder.  “I started to realize that welders make a lot more money and seemed to have a more creative job. It wasn’t the same repetitive tasks all the time,” she says.

But working in a factory in an industrial city was not the Canadian life that M.J. had fantasized about. Going back to the Azores also wasn’t an option. Being a single mother in a Catholic society would not have been embraced well by her family. “I thought, there’s got to be another way. Look how big this country is. There’s got to be something else I can do,” she says. Unlike the tiny island where she grew up, being in this vast country, M.J. saw an opportunity to do something new.

With some savings from her welding job, M.J. decided to go to university, becoming the first in her family to do so.

“I never dreamed I would be a professor. I didn’t even know that was a job,” she admits. What she did know is that university felt like home. “In university, I was no longer that strange young woman with existential angst. It answered what I always knew as a child, that I loved learning.”

M.J. earned a degree in French and Spanish, and with encouragement from a professor, pursued a master’s and later a PhD. Most recently, she published The Hyphen: And Other Thoughts From The In-Between, a collection of essays that explore cultural heritage and hyphenated identity and the complexities of immigrant life.

“My entire adult life has been as an immigrant, keenly aware of others like me, never fully belonging but making the most of all iterations of one-self, sometimes multiple identities,”: she says.

Her efforts to raise the profile of the Azores abroad, which included the creation of an undergraduate course at York University focused on the culture and literature of the Azores did not go unnoticed. She received a Medal for Professional Merit from the Government of the Azores in 2019.

Reflecting on her journey, M.J. says, “The beauty of this nation is that it allows us to keep trying.” She now teaches the children and grandchildren of immigrants and sees the same clash between tradition and modernity, between their desires and family’s expectations, that she faced as a young adult. She encourages her students to follow their passions and embrace the unexpected.

“I believe that my early years in Canada as an immigrant of poor means, working in low-paying jobs and trying to scrape by, gave me a complete understanding of how difficult it is to be an immigrant. My interactions with fellow immigrants, especially women have not just motivated me but also instilled in me a sense of duty to document their struggles, to honour them in everyday acts by never forgetting,” she says.

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