Refuse: CanLit in Ruins

Essais Series #6

by Erin Wunker (editor), Julie Rak (Editor), Hannah McGregor (Editor)

CanLit--the commonly used short form for English Canadian Literature as a cultural formation and industry--has been at the heart of several recent public controversies. Why? Because CanLit is breaking open to reveal the accepted injustices at its heart. It is imperative that these public controversies and the issues that sparked them be subject to careful and thorough discussion and critique.

provides a critical and historical context to help readers understand conversations happening about CanLit presently. One of its goals is to foreground the perspectives of those who have been changing the conversation about what CanLit is and what it could be. Topics such as literary celebrity, white power, appropriation, class, rape culture, and the ongoing impact of settler colonialism are addressed by a diverse gathering of writers from across Canada. This volume works to avoid a single metanarrative response to these issues, but rather brings together a cacophonous and ruinous multitude of voices.

Genres: Nonfiction, Canada, Essays, Poetry, Read For School, Cultural

260 pages, Paperback

First published November 15, 2018

About the author

Erin Wunker is an assistant professor (limited term) in the Department of English at Mount Allison University. She is the co-founder of the feminist academic blog Hook and Eye, and a member of the Board of Canadian Women in the Literary Arts.

Reviews

[Jeff Bursey · Rating 2 out of 5]

More 2.5 stars, and at times over 3 (never near 4), but for a set of writers some of the prose is so bad, with sentences written so poorly, that the number is dragged down.

Numbers, though, aren't the important thing. This book is a polemic, after all, not an aesthetic work (I believe "aesthetic" gets used once, maybe twice), aimed at whatever each writer included here views CanLit as: a cultural industry or institution, or an exclusive and intolerant club for straight white people of a certain age (creaky, often ). Can't say I disagree with those assessments. Though not a BIPOC, a person with a disability, or female, I have never felt part of CanLit due, in part, to geography and my artistic practices. (To be clear: I'm not elevating or comparing my history with others who have been silenced or ignored systematically.)

I pity the writer who says he was "told to mimic the greats: Fitzgerald, Whitman, Eliot, Laurence, Atwood, Martel." How led astray he was to think Fitzgerald and the last three are "greats." It's clear from his essay that he has rebounded from that terrible (and terribly confining) education. I sympathize with the writer who says she wonders if she's "not producing quality work" and believes she would have "produced a greater volume of better-calibre work if I'd had better and earlier mental health intervention and support..." She is the only one here who questions her own abilities.

This book may only be relevant to those who know CanLit (slightly, to a greater degree, or very well) and/or who have heard of the Steven Galloway incident that involved Joseph Boyden and, above all, Margaret Atwood in roles (and downgrades in their stock, to deliberately use a business term for these artists/commodities) that they didn't foresee in their literary careers. None come out looking good. For those who may be in the united states and have a general interest in writing in canada, this may be a useful book. Don't expect good writing, but you may want to pick it up to read the cases and arguments that are presented earnestly by people who, while expertly finding fault with others (biases, power relationships, and so on), seem to have none of their own. Perhaps we'll read about a few of them in 5, 10, 15 years and what wrongs they've done. No one is without blemish, after all.

[Makenzie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was trying to narrow down the stand out essays in this collection, but I realized that it would basically be a list of every single one. They're all so brilliant and I felt I learned something from each of them. I'm so glad I read this book; as somebody considering going into publishing or academia, it provided such an important framework for thinking about my own accountability in spaces that only enable certain stories to be told while obscuring or dismissing others. Many of these essays articulate the importance of drawing attention to the inherent fractures in Canadian literature (and also therefore the settler Canadian nationalist identity), and how painting over these to form a new sense of unity is neither ethically possible or productive; instead, these fractures are what will enable the opening up of spaces for marginalized writers. The point that blind optimism is not the proper mindset for making CanLit less of a racist, sexist, colonialist project was an important reminder for me as a person with immense privilege, and again, helped me to think about where I can have a role in amplifying marginalized voices and when I should step back.

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

a thoughtful collection of essays that puts the current CanLit dysfunction in context and offers a hopeful possibility for getting away from the hierarchy of white male cisgendered hetero power systems and creating something inclusive and diverse. i found the book uplifting and this is the CanLit i want to be part of. Refuse is essential reading for all stakeholders in CanLit, whether you're a reader, a creator, an organizer, an administrator, a book seller, a marketer, read it and learn. let's try not to keep making the same mistakes.

[jacqui · Rating 5 out of 5]

For a long time, CanLit was sold to me as the old guard - you know, Atwood, Munro, Richler, etc - and so I thought that I didn’t like nor need to be invested in it. The few Canadian authors introduced to me as “CanLit” that I did love - Ondaatje, Findlay - seemed like they must be outliers. CanLit didn’t feel like something to find a future in, even as a Canadian who aspired to write and loved nothing more than reading; it didn’t even feel like a present. It felt like a dusty, oppressive old past with nothing for me in it.

It wasn’t until I started studying CanLit, almost wholly as a fluke, in my undergrad that I started to realize that maybe this was on purpose. Maybe certain voices were rising to the top over and over again for reasons other than them being the only thing CanLit had to offer. It definitely became very clear that I had been missing a whole rich heterogeneity of brilliant writers from this weird often horrible thing we call Canada. And then, in my senior year, CanLit split wide open, and all of the rotten stuff at the core of it was suddenly visible on the surface.

It’s been a strange, hard, infuriating, and even scary couple of years to have any sort of investment in Canadian literature, especially if you are someone who tries very hard to a decent person. (I use decent here purposely, as “not a racist or a sexist or a homophobe or a rape apologist” is not... really all that much to ask, I don’t think.) Between UBC Accountable and its fallout, the myriad of issues related to indigenous voices and colonialism that crystallized around the Joseph Boyden scandal, and a whole lot of “leading lights” in Canadian literature going out of their way to reinforce old status quos, attack (primarily) young writers (often of colour) and, quite frankly, show their asses, it’s been - well, it’s been a lot.

This book was born out of what a lot of people have taken to calling, after Alicia Elliott, the “dumpster fire” of CanLit. And it embraces that imagery. The essays and poems in this collection do an excellent job of contextualizing all of what has gone down in the last couple of years, as well as the long-simmering issues that lead to these messes in the first place. It’s an angry book, as it well should be. But it’s also, incredibly, wonderfully, a very hopeful book. There are no platitudes here. No calls to fix something that wasn’t actually broken - it was doing exactly the colonial, patriarchal job it was built to do. Instead, playing on the title’s multiple meanings (deny, garbage, rebuild), there are attempts at visioning something wholly new, something built for and by the people so long excluded and hurt by the structures of CanLit.

(There are also some really great callouts of Margaret Atwood.)

On a personal note: I’d been saving this to read for a few months until I felt like I needed something that would kick me in the ass and refuel the fire in my belly. I’m so glad I read it now, in the grey turn between January and February, as I try to figure out what my next step will be, once I finish this MA in Literature.

[Gabriele Goldstone · Rating 1 out of 5]

I very much appreciated Alicia Elliot's essay, "CanLit Is a Raging Dumpster Fire," ...especially when she says, "Write the books you've always wanted to read" (page 97). But the rest... academic gobbledegook. Maybe it's not meant for someone like me...an ordinary reader of Canadian literature.

[Big Al · Rating 3 out of 5]

A sometimes-hyperbolic but mostly thought-provoking examination of the Canadian literary scene. Most of the Canadians I know don’t keep current with CanLit news and are usually surprised to find out that our literary culture is quite schismatic and fractured. While many people might think that literary twitter drama isn’t a super relevant topic for discussion, many of the authors in this collection would argue that these literary quibbles speak to larger systemic, societal issues at play in Canada today.

This collection features pieces from various members of the Canadian literary scene, such as artists, academics, and digital archivists. Since this is such an opinion-based work, I thought it might have been more interesting to unpack opinions from both sides of the controversial UBC accountable scandal. Unfortunately this work kind of perpetuates the with-us-or-against us attitude that wants to imagine a more inclusive future for CanLit, while still kind of being exclusive to anyone with a different point of view.

I love the idea of this project and how it tries to dream of a more healthy, diverse ecosystem for Canadian literature in the future, but I sometimes these essays lost me with their harsh dismissals of other voices or general disconnect from reality (e.g. the state of publishing in the digital age).

[Crystal · Rating 3 out of 5]

some really interesting pieces, though I will say that I thought the points of view would be a little more diverse - everyone's more or less saying the same thing about Canlit, with some variance in what angle they take, but not much meaningful difference in opinion.

also psa for everyone who was not aware, in this house we do not support margaret atwood anymore. she's like a canadian jk rowling, is super weird and victim blamey about sexual assault, eg. tells people that to avoid being sexually assaulted they should look up dating tips, and also uses her incredibly powerful exclusionary brand of white feminism to silence minorities going through the same struggle that she did when she was becoming successful. queen of opening doors for herself, a minority, only to close them after her to preserve a system that now benefits her!!! boo margaret atwood

[Cara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating book. I picked it up because it had Can Lit in the title. Some really good, thought-provoking messages around white privilege and the importance of having real and meaningful diversity in Can Lit.

[Igpy Kin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Had me consistently almost crying on the bus in the best way possible. Still processing this one; will be for a while.

[Nat Shanese · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is best understood as a collective expression of frustration with the Canadian publishing industry. It does a serviceable job of expressing that frustration and identifying some problems.

There are some shortcomings. The book is framed as a response to certain controversies in the CanLit community, but only the UBCaccoutable affair is actually explained for the reader. There are passing references to the WritingThruRace conference, some events at Concordia, and the "Appropriation Prize" controversy, but these events are only ever alluded to and never explained. The book is also short on arguments. Many contributors rail against how CanLit and Canada in general as racist, sexist, and cis-hetero-patriarchal, but even if you're sympathetic to their position they never explain what this means beyond citing some incidents of discrimination. Many of these claims are just stated dogmatically, and the reader has to nod along just assuming the author's judgment is right about society as a whole and some events they haven't fully described. The irony is that one of the authors' main complaints is that CanLit fosters an exclusionary, clique-like hierarchy of power. Yet, reading this book feels like having a window into a clique of people who all believe the same thing and refuse to fully explain themselves, even if you basically agree with their stated views.

[Rennie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some good ideas but I was looking for more analysis as to why using taxpayer dollars for grants and promotion in a deficit environment to subsidize writers makes sense. With our diversity, it is difficult to say we have a broad culture. Each writer's output has to find its audience, or not, as the case may be, and slapping a CanLit label on something to artificially prop up any material that only 6 people want to read does not seem reasonable.

[Anna Pearce · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are a lot of excellent essays in here that need to be read by a larger audience of academia, which means they won't be. #bitter

[Bradley West · Rating 4 out of 5]

As someone who has not ever really felt invested in the whole experience that is CanLit - being an immigrant I was never schooled in it, and never felt a need to explore a purely Canadian lens, in terms of nation building, etc. I never fell into the trope of " two solitude's" nor into the ideals of what makes up CanLit, as a cozy, collaborative community of diverse voices.

Perhaps, because, like so many immigrants, it didn't take me too long to see clearly the subtle yet significant experiences of racism, classicism, sexism, homophobia etc. that is prevalent in Canada, like all colonialist nation builder project/countries.

This collection of essays, poems, articles and critiques, gives voice to the frustration of the systems that were perfectly designed to get the results it had [ both intended and unintended ] and the desire to dismantle those in some ways, to allow for different more diverse voices and experiences within CanLit.
That will be its nature, lead to different results.

A good read for those interested in the state of CanLit and how many are finding their way to a better experience of it.............for all of us, not just some of us.

[Emma · Rating 3 out of 5]

Refuse combines poetry, anecdote, and criticism; its writers speak from within and without the institutions of academia and publishing. The book is divided into three sections, each taking a different meaning of the word ‘refuse’ as its theme. While I appreciate the rhetoric behind this structure, I found reading the pieces in order a bit repetitive. Selecting essays at random instead kept my interest sharp – the dialogue between Kristen Darch and Fazeela Jiwa offers plenty of context for the uninitiated, but it’s situated in the final section. I also question why there are so many pieces about the controversies surrounding certain famous authors in a book which frequently states its desire to "decentralise" power in CanLit. Halfway through the book, I began to worry that the analysis of these scandals would outweigh other stories of resilience and endurance.

But Refuse: CanLit in Ruins pulls itself out of the never-ending cycle of criticism by also sharing a few remedies and alternative literary spaces created and supported by its contributors. I would have liked more of this, but perhaps they're saving that for a sequel?

[Loretta · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of essays addressing the state of CanLit in the aftermath of UBCAccountable and the Appropriation Prize. As someone who sees CanLit from a somewhat wistful "I wish I were in it" place, and who is also firmly in the "Atwood used to be something but now eff her" camp, I actually really appreciated this book. The essays that grappled with the complicated feelings Atwood, as the most visible and loudest symbol of just how awful white feminism can get, were the ones that most resonated. But there is a lot of good stuff here. Recommended.

[Tina · Rating 4 out of 5]

A timely necessary collection about the current state of “Canlit”

This collection includes a number of powerful poems and insightful essays and critiques.

I did find the introduction to be unnecessarily long. Between the main introduction and the opening pages of each section, the editors used up nearly a quarter of the book explaining and describing the contributions that followed. I found this quite repetitive and feel it took away some of the impact the pieces would have otherwise had.

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to like it, but I didn’t actually finish it. Maybe if I knew more about the publishing industry or less about intersecting oppressions I could have gotten something out of it, but I felt like the points were made, and then repeated.

[Eaton Hamilton · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm in this antho, so the rating is for the other contributors. Well done, writers!

[Eileen · Rating 5 out of 5]

“To me, storytelling is a synonym for accountability.” -Joshua Whitehead

[Alexis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Excellent essays and poems about the current state of Canadian literature. Definite food for thought.

[Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

Powerful essay collection that made me question what I have been taught about CanLit and what it means to be a Canadian author.