Writing the Everyday: Women's Textual Communities in Atlantic Canada

Robin Chamberlain is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University.

In Writing the Everyday, Fuller examines writings by a diverse array of
Atlantic-Canadian women in order to show the interrelationship of text
and community. Among the many prose works analyzed are Bernice
Morgan’s Random Passage and short stories by Helen Porter and Joan
Clark. Fuller also looks at poetry by Rita Joe, Maxine Tynes, and Sheree
Fitch. In her analyses of a wide range of prose and poetry, Fuller
delves into the community cultures that both inform and are informed by
women’s texts. The writings she examines draw on family histories and
oral storytelling as they tackle complex issues having to do with race,
sex, and class.

In content as well as in methodology, Fuller combines the sociological
and the literary. With regard to methodology, this means a combination
of textual analysis and analysis of the conditions in which these texts
are produced, much of which is gleaned from interviews with the writers
themselves. Although her choice of texts and authors might seem odd at
first, Fuller explains that her selection process was guided by the idea
of community, resulting in a spectrum of authors who engage with
Atlantic communities in their writing, and who are aware of the material
and ideological conditions from which their texts emerge.