Writing Ethnicity: Cross-Cultural Consciousness in Canadian and Québécois Literature

Alan Thomas is a professor of English at the University of Toronto.

The 12 essays in this collection offer fascinating perspectives on
issues relating to ethnic writing in Canada.

In his introduction, editor Winfried Siemerling points out that
ethnicity can be seen as a personal disadvantage. Janice Kulyk Keefer
contributes a well-written piece that chronicles her journey to Kiev and
consequent recovery of her Ukrainian self, touching on the shame of
being different. Pierre Nepveu boldly argues that all writers in Canada
experience a sense of dispossession, caught as they are in the desire to
recover a lost land.

The argument that we are all ethnics, and therefore that problems of
ethnicity do not matter, would be resisted by a number of these authors,
including Lien Chao, who chronicles the difficulty of establishing
Chinese-Canadian writing in English. According to Ranu Samantrai, the
plurality of voices provided by ethnic writing is essential to a living
and expanding democracy.

This book is a timely and valuable examination of the nature, hazards,
and advantages of ethnicity in writing.