CLC Kreisel Lecture Series – serie

"L'interrogation n'a pas change a 56 ans: pourquoi ne profite-t-on pas de tout ce qui nous arrive pour changer notre vie?" -Dany Laferriere Le 5 mars 2009, le Centre de litterature canadienne de l'Universite de l'Alberta recevait l'auteur acclame, Dany Laferriere dans le cadre de la conference commemorative Henry Kreisel. La University of Alberta Press et le Centre de litterature canadienne sont fiers de faire paraitre une version ecrite de la conference de Laferriere.

In The Sasquatch at Home, Robinson shares an intimate look into the intricacies of family, culture, and place. Robinson’s disarming honesty and wry irony shine through her depictions of the trip she and her mother took to Graceland, the potlatch where she and her sister received their Beaver Clan names, how her parents first met in Bella Bella (Waglisla, British Columbia), and a wilderness outing where she and her father try to get a look at b'gwus, the Sasquatch. Readers of memoir, Canadian literature, Indigenous history and culture, and fans of Robinson’s delightful, poignant, sometimes quirky tales will love The Sasquatch at Home.

Annabel Lyon's passion for historical novels and her love of ancient Greece make her lecture on the process of creating characters of historical fiction captivating. She discusses the process of wading through historical sources-and avoiding myriad pitfalls-to craft believable people to whom readers can relate. Finding familiarity with figures from the past and then, with the help of hindsight, discovering their secrets, are the foremost tools of the historical novel writer. Readers interested in the literary creative process and in writing or reading historical fiction will find Lyon's comments insightful and intriguing.

Censorship and book burning are still present in our lives. Lawrence Hill shares his experiences of how ignorance and the fear of ideas led a group in the Netherlands to burn the cover of his widely successful novel, The Book of Negroes, in 2011. Why do books continue to ignite such strong reactions in people in the age of the Internet? Is banning, censoring, or controlling book distribution ever justified? Hill illustrates his ideas with anecdotes and lists names of Canadian writers who faced censorship challenges in the twenty-first century, inviting conversation between those on opposite sides of these contentious issues. All who are interested in literature, freedom of expression, and human rights will enjoy reading Hill's provocative essay.

Home, for me, was not a birthright, but an invention. It seems to me when we speak of home we are speaking of several things, often at once, muddled together into an uneasy stew. We say home and mean origins, we say home and mean belonging. These are two different things: where we come from, and where we are. Writing about belonging is not a simple task. Esi Edugyan chooses to intertwine fact and fiction, objective and subjective in an effort to find out if one can belong to more than one place, if home is just a place or if it can be an idea, a person, a memory, or a dream. How "home" changes, how it changes us, and how every farewell carries the promise of a return. Readers of Canadian literature, armchair travellers, and all citizens of the global village will enjoy her explorations and reflections, as we follow her from Ghana to Germany, from Toronto to Budapest, from Paris to New York.

"Speaking one language, I submit, is like living in a house with one window only..." From his legendary birth in a snow bank in northwestern Manitoba, through his metamorphosis to citizen-artist of the world, playwright, pianist, polyglot, storyteller, and irreverent disciple of the Trickster, Tomson Highway rides roughshod through the languages and communities that have shaped him. Cree, Dene, Latin, French, English, Spanish, and the universal language of music have opened windows and widened horizons in Highway's life. Readers who can hang on tight-Highway fans, culture mavens, cunning linguists, and fellow tricksters-will experience the profundity of Highway's humour, for as he says, "In Cree, you will laugh until you weep."

The geopolitics of empire had already prepared me for this…coloniality constructs outsides and insides—worlds to be chosen, disturbed, interpreted, and navigated—in order to live something like a real self.Internationally acclaimed poet and novelist Dionne Brand reflects on her early reading of colonial literature and how it makes Black being inanimate. She explores her encounters with colonial, imperialist, and racist tropes; the ways that practices of reading and writing are shaped by those narrative structures; and the challenges of writing a narrative of Black life that attends to its own expression and its own consciousness.

In A Short History of the Blockade, award-winning writer Leanne Betasamosake Simpson uses Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg stories, storytelling aesthetics, and practices to explore the generative nature of Indigenous blockades through our relative, the beaver—or in Nishnaabemowin, Amik. Moving through genres, shifting through time, amikwag stories become a lens for the life-giving possibilities of dams and the world-building possibilities of blockades, deepening our understanding of Indigenous resistance as both a negation and an affirmation. Widely recognized as one of the most compelling Indigenous voices of her generation, Simpson’s work breaks open the intersections between politics, story, and song, bringing audiences into a rich and layered world of sound, light, and sovereign creativity. A Short History of the Blockade reveals how the practice of telling stories is also a culture of listening, “a thinking through together,” and ultimately, like the dam or the blockade, an affirmation of life. Introduction by Jordan Abel.

Toward an Anti-Racist Poetics seeks to dislodge the often unspoken white universalism that underpins literary production and reception today. In this personal and thoughtful book, award-winning author Wayde Compton explores how we might collectively develop a poetic approach that makes space for diversity by doing away with universalism in both lyric and avant-garde verse. Poignant and contemporary examples reveal how white authors often forget that their whiteness is a racial position. In the propulsive push to experiment with form, they essentially fail to see themselves as “white artists.” Noting that he has never felt that his subjectivity was universal, Compton advocates for the importance of understanding your own history and positionality, and for letting go of the idea of a common aesthetic. Toward an Anti-Racist Poetics offers validation for poets of colour who do not work in dominant western forms, and is for all writers seeking to engage in anti-racist work.

Bodies of Art, Bodies of Labour by Kate Beaton, award-winning author of Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands, explores connections between class, literature, and art from Cape Breton Island. She addresses the fact that people from poor or working-class backgrounds face significant barriers entering the Canadian arts scene and shows that if they do not write themselves into stories, others will, often with damaging results. Beaton thoughtfully examines personal and working-class legacies, celebrating the authenticity and power of truly seeing ourselves and each other in the art that we create.

In Every Story Is a Call to Action, David A. Robertson explores the role of Indigenous stories in stitching together a new understanding of Canada and nurturing a collective experience that helps create lasting social change. He emphasizes the vital and ongoing role of young people in the generational work of reconciliation. A full-time writer who travels across the country to speak in classrooms, conferences, prisons, and festivals, Robertson demonstrates how writing is activism. He shows that stories are catalysts for community-building and youth empowerment. These narratives spark crucial conversations, create vital space for understanding, and inspire taking action for a better future. Robertson’s words not only show readers a transformative path, they encourage everyone to walk it together.

In honour of the twentieth anniversary of the CLC Kreisel Lecture series, three writers explore what it means to write from, in, and with Canada at a moment when “in Canada” is at once fraught and fiercely defended. How do writers think about the relationship between place, identity, and storytelling? Richard Van Camp, Shani Mootoo, and Lise Gaboury-Diallo individually reflect on their connections to land and community, on the literary textures that provoke and support an understanding of belonging, and on the places—imagined and real—that have influenced their work. To write from or about place in Canada is not to claim it, but to remain cognizant of its histories, presences, and limits, and answerable to them. These writers point to Canada as a relational and convergent space rather than a coherent national imaginary. This literary cross-pollination is for all readers keen to explore how writers break trail for each other and how layered our sense of belonging can be.