IN THE NAME OF ME
by JR Enriquez Amparado
JR Enriquez Amparado grew up in Scarborough, ON. He is a Philosophy and Creative Writing major at York University. This is his first published work.
In “In the Name of Me,” one slowly becomes aware of various planes that reveal an existence of perpetual schisms. The writer portrays many dualities: nature’s estrangement from the urban, the complex relationships between men and women, and a father-in-law whose existentialist denial leads to sightings of UFOs. The sense of alienation progresses gradually to reveal a father’s tragic abandonment of his family, the silent devastation and resilient existence of a single mother, and the latent anger of a fatherless child. The narrative voice is singular in its stream of consciousness and prolific in its awareness of the multiplicities of the exterior, and, I might add, contemporary and Canadian in its geography, conflicting loyalties, unremitting transitory identity, openness and self-restraint.
—Rawi Hage, Thomas Morton Memorial Prize Judge, 2016