This book charts the significant changes in contemporary Canada's literary profile since the mid-1990s, within a context of the new national rhetoric of multiculturalism. By looking closely at a representative range of fictions in English by women from a variety of ethnocultural backgrounds, Howells examines the complexities embedded within Canadian identity. What does 'Refiguring Identities' mean for these writers, given their individual agendas and the multiple affiliation of any woman's identity construction? All these writers are engaged in rewriting history across generation, and Howells argues that woman's fiction negotiates new possibilities for cultural change, introducing more heterogeneous narratives of identity in multi-cultural Canada.

Presents a variety of essays on the themes of Canadian fiction.

Rewriting Apocalypse in Contemporary Canadian Fiction is the first book to explore the literary, psychological, political, and cultural repercussions of the apocalypse in the fiction of Timothy Finley, Michael Ondaatje, Margaret Atwood, Thomas King, and Joy Kogawa. While writers from diverse nations have adopted and adapted the biblical narrative, these Canadian authors introduce particular twists to the familiar myth of the end. Goldman demonstrates that they share a marked concern with purgation of the non-elect, the loss experienced by the non-elect, and the traumatic impact of apocalyptic violence. She also analyzes Canadian apocalyptic accounts as crisis literature written in the context of the Cold War - written against the fear of total destruction.

This book revives and revitalises the literary Gothic in the hands of contemporary women writers. It makes a scholarly, lively and convincing case that the Gothic makes horror respectable, and establishes contemporary women’s Gothic fictions in and against traditional Gothic. The book provides new, engaging perspectives on established contemporary women Gothic writers, with a particular focus on Angela Carter, Margaret Atwood and Toni Morrison. It explores how the Gothic is malleable in their hands and is used to demythologise oppressions based on difference in gender and ethnicity. The study presents new Gothic work and new nuances, critiques of dangerous complacency and radical questionings of what is safe and conformist in works as diverse as Twilight (Stephenie Meyer) and A Girl Walks Home Alone (Ana Lily Amirpur), as well as by Anne Rice and Poppy Brite. It also introduces and critically explores postcolonial, vampire and neohistorical Gothic and women’s ghost stories.

This volume offers challenging assessments of the reconfigurations that have shaped Anglophone and Francophone Canadian literatures in the last decades of the twentieth century. Focusing on the pursuit of an ever-elusive «Canadianness» in literary texts, it documents the astonishing range of Canadian diasporic identities that have recently emerged in the Canadian literary landscape. The contributors to this volume boldly transgress the widely held critical assumptions of postcolonialism in their examination of the literary representations of contemporary Canada's many «Others». Ce volume rassemble nombre d'analyses innovatrices des reconfigurations qui ont caractérisé les littératures canadiennes anglophones et francophones durant les dernières décennies du vingtième siècle. Tout en se concentrant sur la quête de l'insaisissable «Canadianité» en littérature, l'ouvrage démontre l'étonnante diversité des identités diasporiques qui ont récemment émergé dans le paysage littéraire canadien. Les contributeurs de ce volume transgressent audacieusement les certitudes généralement acquises du postcolonialisme afin de mieux décrire les représentations littéraires des nombreux «Autres» du Canada actuel.

The Medusa Gaze offers striking insights into the desires and frustrations of women through the narratives of the impressive contemporary novelists Angela Carter, Toni Morrison, Sylvia Plath, Margaret Atwood, A.S. Byatt, Iris Murdoch, Jeanette Winterson, Jean Rhys and Michèle Roberts. It illuminates women’s power and vulnerability as they construct their own egos in opposition to their hostile alter egos or others facing them in their mirrors, and fixes a panoptic gaze on the women stalking its pages, as they learn how to deflect the menacing gaze of others by returning their look defiantly back at them. Some stare back and win assurance; others are stared down, reduced to psychic trauma, madness and even suicide. The book shows how Freud’s, Sartre’s and Lacan’s androcentric views define the Medusa m/other as monstrous, and how the efforts of mothers to nurture may be slighted as inadequate or devouring. It presents Medusa and other goddess figures as inspirational, repelling harm through the ‘evil eye’ of their powerful gaze. Conversely, it also shows women who are condemned as monstrous Gorgons, trapped in enmity, rivalry and rage. Representing English, American and African American, Canadian and Caribbean writing, the works explored here include realistic, social narrative and magical realist writings, in addition to tales of the past and dystopian narratives.

Ian McEwan once said, 'When women stop reading, the novel will be dead.' This book explains how precious fiction is to contemporary women readers, and how they draw on it to tell the stories of their lives. Female readers are key to the future of fiction and—as parents, teachers, and librarians—the glue for a literate society. Women treasure the chance to read alone, but have also gregariously shared reading experiences and memories with mothers, daughters, grandchildren, and female friends. For so many, reading novels and short stories enables them to escape and to spread their wings intellectually and emotionally. This book, written by an experienced teacher, scholar of women's writing, and literature festival director, draws on over 500 interviews with and questionnaires from women readers and writers. It describes how, where, and when British women read fiction, and examines why stories and writers influence the way female readers understand and shape their own life stories. Taylor explores why women are the main buyers and readers of fiction, members of book clubs, attendees at literary festivals, and organisers of days out to fictional sites and writers' homes. The book analyses the special appeal and changing readership of the genres of romance, erotica, and crime. It also illuminates the reasons for British women's abiding love of two favourite novels, Pride and Prejudice and Jane Eyre. Taylor offers a cornucopia of witty and wise women's voices, of both readers themselves and also writers such as Hilary Mantel, Helen Dunmore, Katie Fforde, and Sarah Dunant. The book helps us understand why—in Jackie Kay's words—'our lives are mapped by books.'

Ana Historic is the story of Mrs. Richards, a woman of no history, who appears briefly in 1873 in the civic archives of Vancouver. It is also the story of Annie, a contemporary, who becomes obsessed with the possibilities of Mrs. Richards's life. Ana Historic was Daphne Marlatt's first novel, and was originally published by Coach House Press in Canada and The Women's Press in the U.K. The French translation was published by Les ƒ ditions du remue-mŽ nage.

This book studies the work of some of Canada's most prominent fiction writers in the context of postmodernism. Hutcheon shows that in Canada, this cultural phenomenon has not only found particularly fertile ground on which to develop but has also taken a distinctive form. She examines contemporary cultural theory and the writings of Margaret Atwood, Clark Blaise, George Bowering, Leonard Cohen, Timothy Findley, Jack Hodgins, Robert Kroetsch, Michael Ondaatje, Chris Scott, Susan Swan, Audrey Thomas, Aritha van Herk, and others.

The fifteen Native women writers in Reckonings document transgenerational trauma, yet they also celebrate survival. Their stories are vital testaments of our times. Unlike most anthologies that present a single story from many writers, this volume offers a sampling of two to three stories by a select number of both famous and lesser known Native women writers in what is now the United States. Here you will find much-loved stories, many made easily accessible for the first time, and vibrant new stories by well-known contemporary Native American writers as well as fresh emergent voices. These stories share an understanding of Native women's lives in their various modes of loss and struggle, resistance and acceptance, and rage and compassion, ultimately highlighting the individual and collective will to endure against all odds. Reckonings features short stories by: Paula Gunn Allen, Kimberly M. Blaeser, Beth E. Brant, Anita Endrezze, Louise Erdrich, Diane Glancy, Reid Gómez, Janet Campbell Hale, Joy Harjo, Linda Hogan, Misha Nogha, Beth H. Piatote, Patricia Riley, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Anna Lee Walters.