For me, one of the privileges of living in countries such as Australia and Canada is that there is a blending of peoples from the four corners of the world and the cultures that they bring to a new homeland. There is no room for the homogenisation of culture in a new country. The best of everywhere melts together and blends into a new thing altogether, or according to the cultural mosaic theory, everyone comes together and keeps themselves separate whilst creating a new whole together. I personally believe it’s one of the greatest strength of a new nation that there is room for everyone, but the pros and cons of such ideas as melting pots or mosaics are obviously a whole other blog entry and thought process altogether! So it was quite striking to me to read what could almost (almost) be considered mildly sour grapes in reading about an immigrants story in The Globe and Mail.
Writer Carole Enahoro’s satiric novel upends every cliché about Canadian writing – if you can still call it that.
Diasporic fiction is nothing new in Canada – it is fast becoming our national literature.
And the furthest frontier ever for anything that might credibly be called Canadian literature.
It seems that as a nation created of native and diasporic peoples, reading novels based in far away countries is a common theme, possibly even growing in popularity. Within my own critique group the women are enjoying listening to my romance novel that I’ve based in Australia, which bears witness to the idea that Canadians enjoy reading stories based in other countries. But it seems to me that if you are a country that welcomes strangers to your homeland and invite them to make it their own, of course the newest artistic members of society are going to use the memories, experiences and ideas that come from their original homeland into novels that are published in their new home.
And to be honest I’m not sure where its written to be the literature of a nation, a novelist must reflect the nation within the story to carry the title of the said nations literacy excellence. I’m willing to confess that personally, I don’t have a great deal of interest in Carole Enahoro’s book – it doesn’t sound like my kind of story. But the tone of the article really made me burn with frustration. True, I might have interpreted John Barbers article completely. Maybe he really is praising the strange places that immigrants are writing about in their debut novels which are most obviously not Canadian in setting. Maybe there aren’t any sour grapes in the tone of this piece; maybe I’m just plain wrong. And if you think that’s the truth of the matter feel free to leave a note telling me so.
But I don’t think I am.
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