>>REVIEW
NO MARGINS: CANADIAN FICTION IN LESBIAN
Edited by Catherine Lake and Nairne Holtz
Insomniac Press, 314 pp.
"Are there recurring themes born from a lesbian identity and a Canadian geography?" This is the question Catherine Lake and Nairne Holtz attempted to answer as they began compiling stories and excerpts for what would become No Margins: Canadian Fiction in Lesbian. Apparently "the first anthology to gather together and showcase Canadian lesbian literary fiction," the collection offers readers a glimpse into that world.
Those of us who are neophyte lesbian fiction readers might wonder what that world entails. This collection is a nice introduction that defies categorization. As it turns out, Canadian lesbian fiction is as diverse and multifaceted as the rest of CanLit. This shouldn’t come as a surprise, considering that each story is a product of individual writers’ experiences, beyond simply the lesbian experience.
The 15 women included in the collection represent Canada’s cultural and geographic diversity. Voices from across the country reflect cultural identities spanning the Caribbean, Ireland, Asia, and French and English Canada. The collection includes well-known, award-winning authors like Ann-Marie MacDonald, Dionne Brand and Nicole Brossard. Unfortunately, the collection is a compilation of mainly previously published work, including excerpts from MacDonald’s Oprah pick turned international best seller Fall on Your Knees. If you are looking for fresh new work by these and other contributors, this is not the collection for you.
Other than the fact that all contributors are out lesbians whose writing is necessarily influenced by that identity, no one central theme emerges. Stories delve into issues of intercultural unions, multifarious and in-between identities, sexuality, first kisses, foreign travel, border crossings, family secrets, pregnancy, miscarriage and, as expected, sexual identity.
The editors have included writers’ notes before each story as a means of evoking the politics of lesbian writing. Contributors speak to the label "lesbian literature" and question its definition. Elizabeth Ruth rhetorically asks whether she is a lesbian writer or a writer that happens to be lesbian. Nicole Brossard offers an articulate contribution to the discussion: "There will always be a risk that a text written by a lesbian might not be a lesbian text. While the lesbian text is linguistically constructed around a sexual proposition, opening the space for other propositions to exist, the text written by a lesbian mostly relies on what she projects of herself. Her text becomes a lesbian text only if it alters the reader’s sense of imagination."
I am not convinced that all the stories included in this anthology succeed in this regard. Jane Eaton Hamilton’s "Wart’s Ugly," for example, is a bit too cliché. A little girl (a tomboy, no less) confused by her parents’ dysfunctional relationship and subsequent break-up falls in love with and kisses her friend only to discover that external forces are keeping them apart. The majority of the stories, however, do succeed in altering the reader’s – or at least this particular reader’s – sense of imagination. Luanne Armstrong’s "A’thyraa" is a brilliantly crafted story of the bonds of place, sisterhood, love and having to choose between two distinct cultural and geographical worlds – the plains and the city. The protagonist lives in an in-between world, "pulled by two directions, never able to settle in either," a reality shared by more and more people in our post-modern world of mobility and displacement. Anne Flemings’ "The Pear" is a sensual love affair told in bites: "I will eat the pear. With each bite, I will tell you how it was, our meeting, our time together, our parting. That’s how to tell stories like ours, isn’t it?" Clearly, a subversive and allegorical representation of lesbian sex, "The Pear" is a poetic account of one woman’s ephemeral love affair.
To go back to the question of lesbian identity and Canadian geography that served as the impetus for this project, neither the collection of stories nor the writers’ notes provide a definitive answer. I’m fairly certain the editors did not believe they would reach a decisive conclusion – that would be too easy. The anthology does, however, succeed in contributing to the nascent dialogue on lesbian fiction from a purely Canadian context. |
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