Immigrant literature and the Canadian canon

by: Connie Guzzo-McParland

Classifications are useful in academia. Courses are built around specific genres and themes in literature, and who would complain of being pigeon-holed when one’s book makes it in a class reading list?

However, these labels, while useful in certain contexts, become problematic when they’re used to marginalize one’s work or cut the author’s chances of being recognized as a full participant in the Canadian literary scene.

In my experience, most literary writers don’t set out to write a story with a category in mind: it just happens. And as is typical of most first-time novelists, my debut novel, draws heavily on childhood memories, which for me meant life in a Southern Italian village in the 1950’s undergoing momentous changes. At the age of nine, my placid and contented village life was abruptly interrupted by the frenzy of immigration that swept post-war Southern Italy and saw family after family scramble to leave the villages for whatever destination would have them. My first impulse in writing this novel was to somehow conserve on paper those images of village life that had been lost by the process of emigration, to recreate, if only in a reader’s imagination (and my own), a particular time and place and the forces that led some to pick up and leave. The new country – Canada – is only a glimmer in the horizon, and a vast unknown at that.  Being of Italian origin, my work will undoubtedly be classified under Italian Canadian literature. But what are the boundaries for a work to be classified an Italian Canadian text?

There are many second and third generation writers of Italian origin who don’t write about immigration, or dwell on issues of cultural identity at all. When and where does one stop being considered an immigrant writer?

The tag becomes especially “othering” when one replaces Italian (or other hyphenated) Canadian, with “minority” or “ethnic.” Let’s face it: how many “real” Canadian writers who write about sense of belonging, search for identity or intergenerational clashes can claim of not being descendants of immigrants?

Immigrant literature has been tied closely to the history of Canada and has influenced Canadian literature from its start, as well as given shape to the evolution of Canada’s identity as a country. It was Susannah Moodie’s Roughing it in The Bush,  an “emigrant’s guide” for British people looking to move to Canada, that entrenched into the Canadian psyche the iconic images of Canada as a harsh land to be tamed, a theme  further embraced and perpetuated by Canada’s own Margaret Atwood.

From the 1950s to present day, coinciding with Canada’s own recognition of its own literature and the creation of a Canadian canon and CanLit, the writings of authors from immigrant origins have echoed these themes with their own voices and cultural variations. 1990’s Mordecai Richler’s Solomon Gursky was Here presents a no less desolate an image of Canada’s “raw land and empty space” than that of the early settlers, as well as a country of ambivalences in search of an identity, “not yet a country, but the next door place.” The writings of newer arrivals to the Canadian literary scene and their struggles with issues of belonging have further expanded the question of what it means to be Canadian.

From what I remember of my literature classes, Moodie’s and Richler’s books, though rich in immigrant themes and metaphors, were not classified as immigrant texts but as Canadian literature. It’s heartening that in the last years, many Canadian writers of diverse cultural origins have become household names and recognized with some of the country’s most prestigious prizes – Michael Omdaatje,  Austin Clarke, Nino Ricci, Kim Thuy, Madeleine Thien, Vincent Lam, Rawi Hage to name only a few. That they have contributed immensely to Canada’s literature is an understatement.

But there is still grumbling. In the Italian-Canadian writing community, discussions of exclusion and marginalization from the mainstream literary industry are still frequent. With the exception of a few playwrights — Micone, Rossi, Nardi, Galluccio — and a handful of male authors, Italian-Canadian writers (especially women writers) have been exceptionally under-represented and under-appreciated. In light of David Gilmour’s recent statements on women writers in general, this opinion may not be especially exaggerated.

Writing, like all art, is central to building culture. Good writing does so without exploitation of stereotypes, and ultimately shines a light on the universal truths that binds us all. The culture that I belong to happens to be rooted in the Italian immigrant one, and I do not wish to neither wave it like a flag on World Cup soccer finals, nor downplay it for fear of being classified and, possibly, excluded. It’s who I am. Immigrant literature – whether classified as such or simply as good literature – has opened Canadian readers to other cultures and helped in forming the vibrant, multifaceted, cosmopolitan society that Canada is in the 21st century. I’ll be more than honored to be considered part of this tradition.

Co-director and President of Guernica Editions since 2010, Connie Guzzo-McParland was born in Italy and raised in Montreal. The Girls of Piazza d’Amore, her first book, and was recently published by Linda Leith Publishing.

from: National Post