Read more
Spanning the period from the Massey Commission to the present and reflecting on the media of print, film, and song, this study attends to the burgeoning energy of women writers across genres. It explores how their work interprets our national story. The questioning, disruptive feminist practice of their fiction, filmmaking, poetry, song-writing, drama, and non-fiction reveals the tensions of colonial society at the same time as it transforms cultural life in Canada.
Women’s Writing in Canada resurrects foremothers who were active before and after the mid-century – Ethel Wilson, Gabrielle Roy, Gwen Pharis Ringwood, Dorothy Livesay, and P.K. Page – as well as such forgotten writers as Grace Irwin, Patricia Blondal, and Edna Jaques. Its breadth extends to the contemporary voices and influences of novelists Tracey Lindberg and Heather O’Neill, poets Marilyn Dumont and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, playwrights Hannah Moscovitch and Anna Chatterton, and filmmakers Sarah Polley and Mina Shum. Writing for children as well as memoirs, autobiographies, comic books, and cookbooks illustrate the wide and impressive range of women’s talents.
List of contents
Preface Acknowledgments Introduction: Imag(in)ing the National Terrain from the Mid-twentieth Century to the Sesquicentennial
Approaching National Literature
Women in the Linked Roles of Reading and Writing
The Commissions: From Massey to Truth and Reconciliation
From Total Refusal
and the Quiet Revolution to Cultural Accommodation
New Images of Movement and Diversity Fiction
Prospects at Mid-Century
Wrestling with the Strictures of Marriage and Family
Revolutionary Talents and Experiments
Flowering Careers in the Sixties
Trajectories of Celebrity: Munro and Atwood
The Tangle of Domesticity and Independence
Rhizomes of Sexuality, Nation, Race, and Ethnicity
Extensions in 2017 Film
Original Screenplays
Adaptations of Women’s Writing in Canada
Documentaries Poetry
Jaques, Livesay, Waddington, and Page: "fired in the kiln of endurance"
P.K. Page: Onlooker and Participant
Wilkinson, Brewster, Avison, and Macpherson: "clearing the hurdles of sleep"
MacEwen and Atwood: "the slow striptease of our concepts"
Webb, Lowther, Marlatt, and Brossard: "the way any of us are tangled in the past"
Tostevin, Brand, Halfe, and Dumont: "their fragile, fragile symmetries of gain and loss"
Crozier, Moure, Zwicky, Carson, Michaels, Bolster, and Shraya: "the truth likes to hide out in the open"
Karen Solie: "poetic hipster" Music
Folk Singers Reclaiming Traditions
Punk, Pop, and Country
Adult Contemporary Styling Drama
Ringwood: Canadian Drama’s Foremother
Joudry, Hendry, and Simons: Examining Emotions
Pollock and Bolt: Re-viewing History and Power Politics
Sharon Pollock: "meaning through the making of theatre"
Ritter, Glass, Clark, and Lill: Enacting Vulnerabilities
Thompson and MacDonald: Performing Marginalization and Shape-Shifting
Judith Thompson: "through the looking glass, darkly"
Gale, Sears, Mojica, Cheechoo, Nolan, and Clements: Recording "Documemories"
MacLeod, Moscovitch, and Chatterton: Exploring Impasses Writing for Children
Fiction about Children and Young Adults
Other Times and Space of Fantasy
Illustrated Narratives Non-fiction
Memoirists and Autobiographers
Commentators on Our World
Advisors and Observers Conclusion
Timeline
Notes
Works Cited
Credits
Index
About the author
Patricia Demers is a distinguished university professor in the Department of English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta.
Summary
This study discusses the influences, crossovers, and multiple genres through which women writers represent a changed and changing Canada.
