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LIEN CHAO, Beyond Silence: Chinese-Canadian Literature in English

From unappreciated railway workers facing institutional racism and neglect in the last century to national cultural figures of the present, the Chinese, like other coloured peoples of Canada, have made great inroads into the mainstream, which in turn has adjusted its self-image to accommodate diversity.

“…an important milestone in the evolution of Canadian literary studies”

Arun Mukherjee, York University

CRITICISM

ISBN 9780920661697  $21.95  paper

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ARNOLD ITWARU and NATASHA KSONZEK, Closed Entrances: Canadian Culture and Imperialism

A tough, hard-hitting look at Canadian cultural institutions that places them in the continuous tradition of the Western imperialistic enterprise that dominated the third world and now dominates immigrant culture in the West.

“Arnold Itwaru invites us to re-examine our literary-critical proprieties and join him in a quest to create a discourse that will open up these avenues of inquiry. Canadian literature deserves to be taken this seriously.” —Books in Canada

CRITICISM
ISBN 9780920661253  $14.95  paper
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CHELVA KANAGANAYAKAM, Configurations of Exile: South Asian Writers and their World

Interviews with some of the major South Asian writers from across the globe, including Vikram Seth, Tariq Ali, David Dabydeen, Shashi Tharoor, Bapsi Sidhwa.

 
INTERVIEWS
ISBN 9780920661475  $16.95  paper
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CHELVA KANAGANAYAKAM, Dark Antonyms and Paradise: The Poetry of Rienzi Crusz

The poetry and prose of Rienzi Crusz are about many things—exile, identity, family, religion, politics, and racism—and this work is an attempt to demonstrate that the various facets are a result of a holistic vision that transcends narrow labels. Crusz is best known in Canada as a diasporic writer, committed to exploring the complexities of living between and among two worlds. This study goes beyond binary formulations to argue that while such markers are necessary, a full understanding of the poet's achievement requires that personal history, the political context of migration, poetic influences, and readership in Canada be taken into account. A carefully researched and definitive study, Dark Antonyms and Paradise offers an insightful reading of the work of a major Sri Lankan Canadian poet.

POETRY
ISBN 9780920661680  $15.95  paper
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NURJEHAN AZIZ, Floating the Borders: New Contexts in Canadian Criticism

This collection of ground-breaking essays looks at some of the leading new trends and writers who have transformed the face of Canadian literature in the last thirty years. The ten essays and fifteen book reviews consider in detail the works of Rohinton Mistry, Dionne Brand, Austin Clarke, MG Vassanji, Shyam Selvadurai, Josef Skvorecki, and many others.

"The book reviews are remarkable for their fairness and their honesty, a reminder of the valuable critical spirit cultivated at TSAR."
— Canadian Literature

CRITICISM
ISBN 9780920661802  $24.95  paper
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BASDEO MANGRU, Indenture and Abolition: Sacrifice and Survival on the Guyanese Sugar Plantations

This thoroughly-researched and well-documented book looks at several of the key aspects of the phenomenon of Indian indentured labour in the West Indies, from beginning to end—from the methods of recruitment in Northern India, the conditions of potential labourers in the Calcutta depots and aboard ships in transit; through conditions on the plantations in British Guiana (Guyana) and the protests and strikes against abuses; to the final abolition campaign in India and its success in 1918.

"Basdeo Mangru is a careful and thorough scholar who has studied the sources in great detail, including records which have scarcely been examined by earlier writers on the Indian diaspora... A sound contribution to West Indian and Imperial history." Donald Wood, University of Sussex

"... will make a lasting impact on Indo-Caribbean scholarship. He is meticulous, original, and above all committed to his subject." —David Dabydeen

"... Erudite, lucid scholarship. Mangru's meticulous research produces long-awaited and convincing evidence of the struggles of the Indians for their rightful place in the Caribbean."

—Frank Birbalsingh, York University

CULTURAL STUDIES
ISBN 9780920661321  $21.95  paper
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ARNOLD ITWARU, The Invention of Canada: Literary Text and the Immigrant Imaginary

"The Invention of Canada is a well-researched introduction to the theory and practice of writing. There is an effortless fluidity of style which makes the book a pleasure to read. It is a powerful base from which to construct the argument for a Canadian imagination which displays the perils and strengths of an alternative tradition to that dominated by Frye, Atwood, Dennis Lee and the Toronto school." —Ian Davies

"This book is a valuable contribution to Canadian critical theory. Itwaru's rigorous analysis of the ideological subtexts of the novels of post World War II immigrant writers upsets the proprieties of Canadian criticism, which has consistently avoided commenting on thematizations of racism, exploitation, hegemony, and unequal distribution of power." —Arun Mukherjee 

 
CANADIAN STUDIES
ISBN 9780920661130  $15.95  paper
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MG VASSANJI, A Meeting of Streams: South Asian-Canadian Literature

At no time in history has there been such a massive movement across geographical, political, and cultural barriers as the one we are witnessing in our own time. The South Asian presence in Canada and the West is a result of this movement. It originates predominately from the countries of South Asia—India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka—and those of the Caribbean and East and South Africa.

The essays and articles in this volume comprise a concerted and many-sided look at the literature of this group. Several of them are also informative surveys of the important branches of this literature. Altogether they provide the contexts for appreciating it, and understanding it as an esthetic, social, and cultural phenomenon. At the same time they address several fundamental issues, regarding the relationship of this literature both to traditional (South Asian and Third World) and to mainstream (Canada and North America) languages, literatures, and themes. They probe the past, appraise the present, and throw a glance at the future.

 
CULTURAL STUDIES
ISBN 9780920661000  $15.95  paper
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CHELVA KANAGANAYAKAM, Moveable Margins: The Shifting Spaces in Canadian Literature

 

In these essays some of Canada’s leading literary critics examine how recent Canadian literature addresses notions of multiplicity, and how ideas of space and landscape complement and intersect with the constantly changing facets of Canadian society. The collection considers the works of a large number of diverse writers, while dealing specifically with genres such as Asian, African, and Native Canadian writing.
The contributors are respected scholars of Canadian literature at major universities.
CRITICISM
ISBN 9781894770286  $24.95  paper
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FRANK BIRBALSINGH, Novels and the Nation: Essays in Canadian Literature

Whatever it has meant historically and come to mean today, Canadian identity has always been felt passionately, even as Canadian nationhood has been perceived to be at the brink, under attack from forces both within and without the country.

In these eighteen essays Birbalsingh discusses the evolution of Canadian identity and nationhood as reflected, predominately, in the English fiction of this country, from the writings of the first British expatriates, through the colonial, empire-conscious works of the nineteenth century, to the strongly nationalistic literary consciousness of the mid-twentieth century and finally the contemporary work of a multicultural country continually transforming itself.

This is a timely work with fresh insights on over thirty writers, including Sara Jeanette Duncan, Stephen Leacock, Mordecai Richler, Marian Engel, Austin Clarke, Robertson Davies, Ethel Wilson, and considerations of Native, Jewish, Caribbean, and South Asian writers.

 
CANADIAN STUDIES
ISBN 9780920661499  $19.95  paper
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ARUN MUKHERJEE, Oppositional Aesthetics: Readings from a Hyphenated Space

In these closely argued essays, taking examples from writing and film, Mukherjee considers the place of the third world person – both as artistic creator and as a subject of artistic endeavour – in the West.
This important work includes detailed and original considerations of the works of David Lean, Michael Ondaatje, MG Vassanji, Earle Birney, Rohinton Mistry, Neil Bissoondath, Dionne Brand, and numerous others.

 

CRITICISM
ISBN 9780920661420  $24.95  paper
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ARUN MUKHERJEE, Postcolonialism: My Living

This work charts the author’s intellectual journey during the last ten years as an academic teaching Postcolonial literature in a Canadian university. The essays critique the dominant models of Postcolonial theory that emerge from metropolitan centres and ignore the specifics of time and place. Arun Mukherjee tests these theories by applying them to her classroom experience of teaching authors such as Mulk Raj Anand, Dionne Brand, Anita Desai, Claire Harris, Bessie Head, Sky Lee, and many others.

 

CANADIAN STUDIES
ISBN 9780920661758  $21.95  paper
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SANJAY TALREGA and NURJEHAN AZIZ, Strangers in the Mirror: In and Out of the Mainstream of Culture in Canada

 
This collection of essays, consisting of personal insights, anecdotes, and analyses, looks at the representations of minorities in the cultural space of Canada: the national news media, advertising and commercials, school and university curricula, art and entertainment. The contributors come from a variety of personal and professional backgrounds and the definition of the term “minority” is itself examined. In the process, the authors consider the concept of Canada and being Canadian from different perspectives.
The contributors include: Arun Mukherjee, York University; Fraser Sutherland, editor and writer; Robin Breon, University of Toronto; Michael Neumann, Trent University; Cecil Foster, novelist, University of Guelph; Tarek Fatah, Muslim Canadian Congress; Rozena Maart, University of Guelph.
"If we are interested in learning how to create a truly multicultural vision, reading and then re-reading this group of eloquent essays would be an important start." — India Currents (California)
CRITICISM
ISBN 9781894770194  $24.95  paper
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MARTIN GENETSCH, The Texture of Identity: The Fiction of MG Vassanji, Neil Bissoondath, and Rohinton Mistry
Arguing that globalization is no longer a term defining only international cash flow but also includes the flow and exchange of cultures, this book examines the works of three major Canadian writers of South Asian origin and born in three different parts of the world—MG Vassanji, Neil Bissoondath, and Rohinton Mistry. To demonstrate the complex, textured identities of his authors of choice, Martin Genetsch shows that these and other writers not only negotiate their Canadian identities but also explore themselves in the cultures, histories, and geographical locations they come from. The result is a fine study of an important and defining aspect of Canadian literature.
CRITICISM
ISBN 9781894770415   $25.95  paper
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ROCIO DAVIS, Transcultural Reinventions: Asian American and Asian Canadian Short-story Cycles

This study analyzes the manner in which important Asian American and Asian Canadian writers appropriate the short-story cycle as a tool for both self-representation and empowerment. This work specifically analyzes a number of major works by writers such as Amy Tan, Rohinton Mistry, Sara Suleri, Garrett Hongo, Terry Watada, Sylvia Watanabe, MG Vassanji, and Wayson Choy, among others.

"Transcultural Reinventions deserves notice for its commitment to a significant critical project."
— Canadian Literature

 

CRITICISM
ISBN 9780920661963  $23.95  paper
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H NIGEL THOMAS, Why We Write: Conversations with African Canadian Poets and Novelists

In this volume, African Canadian novelists and poets discuss the complexities of the writing experience. Most of the writers interviewed here are humanists; i.e., they see their work as serious depictions of the human condition, admit that their works are informed by an African Canadian ontology, and adhere to the notion that their books must delight and instruct. These interviews, therefore, are valuable additions to the creative process of the individual writers.
Apart from identifying how the writers’ geographical and social origins have influenced their work, the questions deliberately avoid autobiography. Instead, these writers respond to the exigencies of craft, the manipulations of publishers, the criticism of readers, and the absence of a clearly identifiable market for their works.
The writers include Austin Clarke, Bernadette Dyer, Althea Prince, Afua Cooper, M. NourbeSe Philip, Cecil Foster, Lawrence Hill, George Elliott Clarke, Wayde Compton, Robert Sandiford, Suzette Mayr, Claire Harris, Pamela Mordecai, and Ayanna Black.

 

INTERVIEWS
ISBN 9781894770347  $24.95  paper
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CARMEN CÁLIZ-MONTORO, Writing from the Borderlands: A Study of Chicano, Afro-Caribbean, and Native Literatures in North America

This work looks at three “borderlands” literary responses: those of the Chicanos at the border between the southern United States and Mexico, the African Caribbean minority in Canada, and the Native North Americans. Carmen Cáliz-Montoro shows how in these diverse yet similar cases mythology and symbolism get transformed and recreated to respond to the burdens of history to produce new works of art.

"A beautiful discourse on feminine spirituality in literature. Cáliz-Montoro’s writing is distinguished by a sincere search for truth, harmony, and peace."

Frederick Ivor Case, University of Toronto

 
CRITICISM
ISBN 9780920661871  $21.95  paper
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HIMANI BANNERJI, The Writing on the Wall: Essays on Culture and Politics

Through critical discussions of Marxist theatre in Bengal, the anti-racist and feminist poetry of Dionne Brand in Canada, the revolutionary poetry of Ernesto Cardenal in Nicaragua, a recent popular trend in Bengali fiction, and the films of Russian Andrei Tarkovsky, these essays provide acute, dispassionate insights into politically committed cultural activity. What is a true people's theatre (as opposed to a middle-class version of one?) How is Marxism reconciled with Christianity in Nicaraguan revolutionary politics? What has been the role and status of women actors in India? How does recent trendy Bengali fiction reflect an attitude towards acquisition of commodity (and women?) How does the mind comprehend history, in the films of Andrei Tarkovsky, and why do they unsettle the Western sensibility? These are some of the questions addressed in this well-argued, informative, and engaging book.

CRITICISM
ISBN 9780920661307  $14.95  paper
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