Refuse anthology shakes up the cosy CanLit status quo

In 2015, the novelist Steven Galloway was suspended, then fired, from his position as chair of the creative writing program at the University of British Columbia over allegations of misconduct.

A group of prominent Canadian writers signed a public letter, under the name UBC Accountable, expressing their concern that Galloway had not been treated fairly. This, in turn, led to charges that an elite establishment was circling the wagons to protect one of its own and not taking the complaints against Galloway seriously.

Galloway would later receive a payout from UBC for damage to his reputation, and has launched a lawsuit accusing two dozen individuals of defamation. Because so much of the story is still not in the public domain, arguments over exactly what happened, who was in the right and the meaning of it all continue.

Refuse: CanLit in Ruins, edited by Hannah McGregor, Julie Rak and Erin Wunker, is an anthology of pieces relating to what the authors describe as this “rupture event” or “key cultural mo- ment,” with dishonourable mention also made of other CanLit controversies that occurred around the same time: the questions raised over Joseph Boyden’s ancestry, Hal Niedzviecki’s “appropriation prize” miscue, and various additional charges of harassment and insensitivity that have combined to turn CanLit into (the preferred metaphor) a “raging dumpster fire.”

This is not a book about Canadian writing. Instead, its concern is with the politics of CanLit, with hierarchies and systems of power. Power is a word that gets used a lot throughout the various essays and conversations included in the book, and it is always considered critically.

Those who have power are privileged and entitled. They have agents and receive big book contracts, win literary prizes, headline festivals, get tenure and become celebrities. Those who don’t have power remain marginalized, excluded and, at best, ignored. (At worst, as a poem by Kai Cheng Thom tells us, “it is the nature of power and men / to misuse and abuse bodies.”)

There’s a prodigious bill of complaint assembled here to lay at the feet of the mandarins of CanLit, including essays that reference rape culture, neo-liberalism, heteropatriarchy, toxic masculinity, ableism, the theft of Aboriginal lands, police discrimination, the denial of LGBTQ2S+ rights, the appropriation of voice and the exploitation of Chinese labour in building the national railway.

That’s a lot to have to deal with, but the editors — three “able-bodied cis white women with stable jobs,” conscious of their privilege but rejecting the role of “white saviours” — see the fault lines of CanLit as being “as long and deep as the fault lines of Canada itself.” Whether you agree or disagree, Refuse is an important collection of immediate responses to this fracturing. Important because — whether it’s being taught in the classroom or making news headlines — the debate over these matters is now so loud, it’s no longer possible to ignore the calls for change.

In an attention economy, controversy has value. It’s no exaggeration to say these political battles within CanLit now dominate the discussion of Canadian writers and writing.

The “appropriation prize” controversy, for example, blew up in a journal that few people had ever heard of much less read, and yet it garnered an enormous amount of national media coverage.

And, while Joseph Boyden is a bestselling, award-winning novelist, he is probably better known today for questions raised about whether or not he qualifies as an Indigenous author.

Despite all of the attention it has received, Refuse argues that the discussion of these matters in mainstream publications has been anything but fair and balanced.

Tanis MacDonald, in what I thought the most interesting essay, describes the gluttony of the CanLit establishment as “the uncharitable impulse to corral all the attention, all the time.” In contrast, many of the pieces collected here were first published on platforms such as blogs and social media. Part of what the editors wanted to do was simply rescue them from being lost.

That mission, at least, has been accomplished. This was, however, the easy part. Because these CanLit controversies encourage the kind of tribalism and snap moral judgments (on both sides) that drive traffic and grab eyeballs, anyone speaking out on them has been given a megaphone.

The results have led to a great deal of both signal and noise. This may not lead to a renaissance in Canadian writing, but it does have the potential to shake up the status quo.