Thursday.

Thursday done! I finished reading No New Land by M. G. Vassanji at lunch today – a good book. Truthfully, I only came to it because it’s on a required reading list for my comparative Canadian lit class…the course is about minority voices and representation in the so-called canon. Vassanji’s own feelings on the matter? If pressed, I describe myself as an IndoAfrican Canadian writer. Attempts to box me in I find abhorrent.

Also interesting is Vassanji’s notes on the book: Set in Toronto’s Don Mills, about an immigrant family from Dar es Salaam. Even the elevator is against you. Isn’t that the truth? I remember making the move from Toronto to Calgary, and it felt that way, too – I found myself identifying pretty strongly with the ‘alien’ aspects of a new home in the book.

It’s ostensibly about a man accused of assaulting a young woman, but the book spends most of its time filling in back story and explaining family relations. The actual accusation and the aftermath are dealt with in the first and last chapter, really. But I enjoyed that sense of storytelling – the idea that you had to understand the character and his family before you could really grasp what was happening to him.

Interesting. I’ve pulled an article to read for later – an editorial Vassanji wrote for Canadian Literature about whether or not he is a Canadian writer (the answer, at first blush, is yes):

This is what I am: I live on such and such a street, in Toronto or Winnipeg or wherever; I have lived before in other places that I could name for you; I have brought up two or three children, I pay my taxes, contribute to a few charities, try to mow my lawn regularly. I clear the snow, though I tend to wait a little in the hope that the sun will come out and do the job for me. This is what I can write about, this is what the inspiration was, where it took me: a street in Dar es Salaam, a village in Ghana, a tenement in Calcutta.

Hmm. Waiting for the sun to clear away the snow makes me think he’s living in Calgary. Or possibly Edmonton.

I like his idea of a shifting landscape for storytelling, too – it’s nifty.

If we are telling the stories of so many Canadians, aren’t we then telling the stories of Canada as well? What kind of Canada? This is not a Canada only of the Mounties and hockey, the north and Newfoundland, the beer commercials, into which newcomers assimilate; it is a Canada which constantly adjusts and redefines itself, though in degrees. It is a Canada that is as much urban as it is the north. If ten percent of a nation resides in one city, then a cityscape deserves to be recognized as being as essential, as essential as the Rockies, as the Prairies, the Atlantic. The Americans have done this; Canadians are embarrassed to do it.

I like that he’s breaking free of the grand wilderness narrative (or fishing village narrative) and acknowledging the significance of urban Canadian life.

Well worth it. I’m glad I had the chance to read this book. I’m moving on to Knife on the Table by Jacques Godbout – the course is giving a nod to Quebecois literature.