By Sara Hailstone
Content warning: sexual assault
Refuse: CanLit in Ruins, co-edited by Hannah McGregor, Julie Rak, and Erin Wunker, is a compilation of nonfiction and fiction texts writing through the pain and uncomfortable state of CanLit as deemed by contributor Alicia Elliott as a ”raging dumpster fire.” Assertively and unapologetically writing through layers of what it means to ”refuse” the current state of CanLit, this text will be, I assume, included on syllabi and course outlines across Canadian university English departments. With contributions by Zoe Todd, Keith Maillard, Jane Eaton Hamilton, kim goldberg, Tanis MacDonald, Gwen Benaway, Lucia Lorenzi, Alicia Elliott, Sonnet l’Abbé, Marie Carrière, Kai Cheng Thom, Dorothy Ellen Palmer, Natalee Caple & Nikki Reimer, Lorraine York, Chelsea Vowel, Laura Moss, Phoebe Wang, A.H. Reaume, Jennifer Andrews, Kristen Darch & Fazeela Jiwa, Erika Thorkelson, and Joshua Whitehead, Refuse gives space for diverse stances on contemporary CanLit controversies that have arisen since 2016. The text offers anticipation of what will be built and what will grow from the “ruins of” this country’s state of literature.
Refuse, as in, to say “no.” No to the #UBCAccountable letter that essentially created a class war further accentuating the divisions within CanLit as an industry, as an area of academic study, as a history of writing of a settler country that has been exclusive in nature, and as a continued discourse forward into a future of plurality and the end of literary celebrity. No to sexual harassment. No to the Appropriation Prize and no to the debates about Joseph Boyden’s identity claims. These current controversies fix the core of the conversations within the text.
Refuse also, as in waste, “what wastes our time, and our lives as writers and teachers, is the kind of endorsement of the status quo that we want to see taken out of CanLit.”
Refuse, lastly, to reconnect and fix “what has been torn apart, evoking the idea that, after something is destroyed, something better can take its place.” There is a desire to dismantle and rebuild from ruin; I wonder if that is fully possible.
The play on words with Refuse as a title works well creatively and from a space of literary analysis, however, and this feeling extends beyond the perimeters of the text itself, I don’t know if I see CanLit as a raging dumpster fire. I see the fire raging in the crowds of Canada’s publishing industry, but I separate industry from art. The analogy is not creeping into me fully.
The compilation includes a break within the analysis by Laura Moss: “I pause here to disentangle "CanLit" as a noun synecdoche of all that is broken in the writing industry and the academy from "CanLit" as a short-form term that refers to the history of writing in Canada.” Moss has been teaching CanLit for over twenty years and is an editor of the journal Canadian Literature. Her tone is one I encountered throughout my studies at the University of Guelph in English (2005-2009) and at Trent University in the Public Texts Graduate program (2018-2020), one of a social historical lens of Canadian literature. In studying ”minoritized literatures” I felt my studies were critical in calling me to action to question the bedrock and pillars of discourses in Canada that have been historically and socially racist and exclusive, while appreciating a contemporary and resilient literary thread of experiment, exploration, and reclamation. Like Laura Moss, I refuse to give up on CanLit. I’m grateful my university studies in CanLit do not feel homogenous.
The compilation strives to leave the reader hopeful for what will grow from the ruins, or ash, of that raging dumpster fire. The necessary conversations have been laid down with an inclusion of voices from social media. I would be inspired for the extension of these conversations in Refuse to move us deeper into the literary and creative. A play of words on the analogy of CanLit as “surviving” could also serve to move us deeper as we have been doing more in this country than getting by and holding on. I am hopeful for more conversation, more analogy, more motif, and more creating.